[HN Gopher] Spain will introduce free train travel
___________________________________________________________________
Spain will introduce free train travel
Author : donohoe
Score : 408 points
Date : 2022-07-23 15:33 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| fulvioterzapi wrote:
| > The new plan has some limitations. While Germany's 9-euro ($9)
| passes cover all public transit except faster train services,
| Spain will restrict itself to regional and suburban rail
| services, which are not as extensive as they are in Germany.
| While it might be technically possible to travel across Spain
| using only regional trains, it would not necessarily be easy
| because the slower network is quite patchy.
|
| To be honest the German situation is not so different from the
| Spanish one.
|
| Going from Munich to Berlin with the 9-euro ticket requires from
| 3 to 6 changes, and from 10 to 15 hours.
| xcambar wrote:
| I think it is expected to be somewhat complex, considering
| you're using regional trains only. These trains serve a
| different purpose compared to national lines.
|
| I would be incapable of finding an easy regional journey
| between major cities in the countries I can think of.
| marsven_422 wrote:
| victor9000 wrote:
| I think the sweet spot is to charge a nominal fee as opposed to
| making it outright free. We tried free in Seattle and it resulted
| in buses full of nuisance activity such as drug use, harassment,
| violence, toilet use, and other unpleasantries that resulted in a
| lot of people avoiding transit altogether.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| If you have a large number of people for whom a free bus is the
| only reasonable shelter then that is what will happen. Most
| European countries deal with homelessness, drug addiction,
| etc., differently. So I'm not sure that the experience is
| transferable.
| victor9000 wrote:
| Unfortunately the majority of Seattle's homeless population
| actively refuses proper shelter or assistance [1], but if
| that's different in Spain then I can see how it would lead to
| different outcomes.
|
| [1] https://www.q13fox.com/news/report-more-than-half-of-
| homeles...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The difference between pennies and free is substantial. For
| tourists, navigating each system's ticketing system is a pain.
| Even as a New Yorker, the antiquated paper mechanisms of the
| AirTrain are often enough to nudge me into a car.
| ghaff wrote:
| As someone who was traveling a lot pre-pandemic and does tend
| to take public transit when there are good options available--I
| am always shocked at just how bad so many ticketing systems are
| for someone who is unfamiliar, may very well be tired/stressed,
| and may not even speak the language. It's not even just the
| ticketing. It can also be which piece of paper goes into the
| turnstile etc.--while the people lined up behind you are
| getting increasingly annoyed.
|
| Heck, after not using for quite a while, the contactless
| ticketing in my home-ish city wouldn't work for me for unclear
| reasons when I tried to take the subway and I ended buying a
| new card.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Every bus company that I have used in recent years (UK,
| Norway) has an app that allows for route planning and buying
| tickets. In many cases it is an umbrella app that covers all
| transport in a given region. So if you have a smartphone
| there is no paper ticket.
| ghaff wrote:
| So as someone who has just arrived you only need to
| download an app somehow and register with it.
| [deleted]
| diegoholiveira wrote:
| The myth of free stuff. Love it.
| chris-orgmenta wrote:
| I think we all have an understanding that this is through
| taxpayer (corporate or resident) money. Is it really a myth?
| Free, in this context, is implied and inferred as 'the consumer
| doesn't pay directly for the ticket'. There is no trickery
| here.
| zagrebian wrote:
| Did anyone else misread it as "free time travel"?
| ErneX wrote:
| AFAIK this only temporarily to try to alleviate inflation, so
| shrug.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| I'm not hoping in a train and travelling free to Madrid. This
| applies to ciertain rail pass used mostly by workers.
|
| The thing is that renfe has been closing many medium travel
| lines outside Madrid and Barcelona in exchange of HSR, so in
| reality everyone else is subsidizing Madrid and Barcelona...
| escapecharacter wrote:
| My fantasy when it comes to temporary measures like these is
| that no one will be willing to take the political hit to take
| them away.
| ErneX wrote:
| Problem is when they are afraid to revert this change and
| then the outcome is the trains getting lack of maintenance
| for lack of funds.
| [deleted]
| pagutierrezn wrote:
| More remote work might be better than free mobility to reduce
| fuel consumption
| TedShiller wrote:
| Spain will introduce worse trains and worse service
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Pretty cool. Imagine if it was free to get around. Right now in
| the US we have a shit tier system. You can get to a lot of places
| on a mega bus for cheap. But you will hate every second of it.
|
| I wish all public transit was free as well as Amtrak's.
| franciscop wrote:
| I live in Tokyo now, but I'm from Valencia, Spain. I knew the
| train there was bad when the local subway network, called
| "metrovalencia", was known locally as "metrovalenshit" (there's
| even a twitter @metrovalenshit), but compared to other cities or
| specially Tokyo it's like a toy. In here (Tokyo) they make major
| station changes without even disrupting traffic[1], the only time
| traffic is disrupted meaningfully is when there's a major
| earthquake/typhoon.
|
| Back in Valencia, the gvmt started building a new line, but then
| they abandoned it for over a decade. In some weekends with strong
| rains it floods. At least we got to see really beautiful pictures
| when someone entered and navigated with a boat! Multiple times
| across the years[2][3].
|
| If you go a bit more local (smaller towns) and want to take a bus
| that is scheduled every 20 min, you go to the bus stop and hope
| that one will come within the next hour. We had to help a
| foreigner once that was gonna miss her flight since she was
| waiting for over an hour with no sight of a bus.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BYW4YYqG5A
|
| [2]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20130111154819/http://www.goodfe...
|
| [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=022pgffEy6A
| kh_hk wrote:
| Apples to oranges, I am sorry to put it so bluntly. I agree we
| should strive for better transportation and services overall,
| but comparing Tokyo with Valencia?
| Fargren wrote:
| One thing that I have noticed about Spanish natives in my five
| years of living in Spain, is this frequent comparison with
| every other richer country.
|
| By almost every measure, life in Spain is great. Public
| transport is great, but you compare it with Japan which is the
| best in the world. Security is great, but you compare it with
| Luxembourg. Unemployment and salaries are... OK, above average
| at least, but you compare it with Germany.
|
| Spain has issues, but every other country does too. There's a
| reason "eramos felices y no lo sabiamos" is a Spanish
| expression... I really wish people here would appreciate how
| good they have it.
| franciscop wrote:
| You are mixing being happy with being in a country with great
| economy/salary/transport/etc.
|
| e.g. the job situation is ridiculously bad, and that's not a
| "compare" thing, it just is. I've seen people break down
| crying in class in my degree that hated it and studied it
| only because it's one of the few that you were kinda promised
| employment when you finished. Many friends all around Europe,
| or jobless for long stretchs of time, depending on their
| family.
|
| I have similar anecdotes for how transportation or security
| can be troublesome in Spain.
|
| Sure you can be happy with little, as Spaniards normally do,
| but that doesn't mean everything is great or we shouldn't try
| to do better. How do we improve if we don't see the problems
| within?
| superchroma wrote:
| Well, in fairness, I think just about every rail line on this
| planet pales in comparison to the reliability and quality of
| Tokyo rail operations.
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| The Swiss are probably in contention.
| franciscop wrote:
| True, I'm just saying that while I knew other
| cities/countries were better, but I didn't really _know_ how
| many orders of magnitude better until I lived in Tokyo. It
| wasn 't until I left the pond that I learned that there was
| not only a lake, but an ocean.
| wumpus wrote:
| I recently did Madrid-Granada and back via train, it was a
| great experience.
| Scarbutt wrote:
| Most countries are going to be bad when compared to Japan.
| Japan is also the third largest economy.
| hanoz wrote:
| The UK is the fifth largest and almost every public service
| is a complete omnishambles.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| On the topic at hand, though: Scotland has recently
| introduced free bus travel for resident under 25s, which is
| really useful. When I was that age I'd always take the bus
| over to Glasgow, because it was cheaper than the train.
| Between long-distance and local bus services, my teens can
| get most places in Scotland reasonably easily. And even
| down to Berwick or Carlisle, although they'd need to pay to
| go any further into England.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I suggest dealing with the US healthcare system, or try
| taking public transportation in literally any city in the
| US and compare it to London.
| buzzert wrote:
| The US healthcare system is not a public service. Nor are
| the trains in Tokyo.
| bogomipz wrote:
| Sure, then let's compare NYC to London:
|
| The train in NYC runs 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The
| London Tube stops at midnight.
|
| The train in NYC is much much cheaper, it's $2.75 to go
| anywhere on its almost 400km of track. London's Tube has
| zone-based pricing.
|
| The NYC subway cars are all air-conditioned.
|
| The NYC subway cars are far roomier than the Tube.
|
| NYCs subway is "cut and cover" and so the stations aren't
| nearly as deep and quicker to get in and out of.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Yeah but our trains are filthy and full of derelict and
| deranged people. I love the Subway but the Tube has a lot
| going for it.
| boulos wrote:
| > omnishambles
|
| TIL this amusing combo, thanks! The Wikipedia entry is
| helpful [1]
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnishambles
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Agreed. Spain is leading the world here. It's frankly
| embarrassing given our population density, love or railways
| and history (inventing them), we have "Railtrack" plus a
| dozen foreign-owned totally rubbish train companies. We are
| more concerned with ticket barriers, CCTV cameras and
| Orwellian tracking of passengers than getting people from A
| to B so the economy can prosper with the smallest
| environmental harm.
| e4325f wrote:
| Spain invented the railway?
| hanoz wrote:
| He's talking about Britain, compared to Spain.
| franciscop wrote:
| Spain has the 2nd largest high speed train network of the
| world, only after China (and only in the last few years, it
| was #1 before). So I don't think it's a problem of
| investment, it's a problem of how well you maintain things,
| if you overbuild and then cannot finish or maintain it then
| it's a problem that has little to do with economy.
|
| Another example of high speed train, they forced flight
| companies to make the Valencia <=> Madrid flights more
| expensive because people preferred going by plane than by
| train (faster, easier, way cheaper). Yup, instead of making
| the train better or cheaper, just force the private companies
| to be worse so the public infra can compete. Why was it so
| expensive? Because of it being many times overbudget? Why?
| Because everyone was taking money.
| Scarbutt wrote:
| Fair enough. I should have also add that Japan is an
| engineering powerhouse.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| As a Spaniard, I think that's highly suspicious of being
| one of those internal internal consumption narratives of
| how bad everything is.
|
| Do you have any proof of that scheme you're mentioning? I
| say this because, believe it or not, one of the things that
| Spain does right is building infrastructure on a budget.
| There has been corruption cases and places when it has been
| horrid, but in general is well managed.
|
| You'd be surprised how bad it is in many other countries
| deemed better by your average spaniard. In terms of cost
| overruns, time, and all kinds of nasty shit.
| dieortin wrote:
| Flying is artificially cheap to the point the ticket prices
| make no sense. It's massively subsidized, so it's not
| really fair to compare it with the train.
|
| Anyways, I have to hard disagree on flying being faster and
| easier than going by train. Flying is a pretty horrendous
| experience in comparison, and if you account for the time
| spent in the airport and getting to it it's not faster
| either.
| franciscop wrote:
| Shouldn't the _national_ high speed rail be at least as
| subsidized as _private flight companies_?
|
| This particular flight I'm discussing it's more
| convenient. Getting to the high speed train station is
| tricky (there's no subway there!), you have to go to the
| closest one and then walk 10-15 min, which is just
| slightly faster _but harder_.
|
| Let's see times:
|
| * Train: 15 min to the station + 15 min early + 1.5h in
| the train + 15 min in destination = 2h15min
|
| * Plane: 30 min to the station + 30 min early + 30 min
| flight + 30 min at destination = 2h
|
| (this is domestic flying where you normally just walk in
| fairly straightforward)
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Yeah I'm in the USA just jealous that they have trains in
| Spain.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Interstate is marvelous.
|
| US is too big and too sparsely populated both on a large
| scale and small scale for trains like Europe, Japan and
| China.
|
| There's a part where no one talk about, and that's the
| infrastructure _within_ the city are not conducive to
| trains. People get to a train station and they need to get
| around and unless you 're talking about New York they
| really just need another car.
|
| This in comparison to European and Asian cities where your
| friend can just post you an address and you can use public
| transit all the way to the last block.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| The Yamanote Line doesn't run through the countryside.
| You could just build it around LA, and then build dense
| housing near stations once people don't need cars...
| Aperocky wrote:
| > build dense housing near stations once people don't
| need cars
|
| Ship has sailed, it usually works in the reverse. People
| aren't coming back from suburbia because there's stations
| where they don't need cars.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| I live in the burbs currently (3 minutes from a train
| station and convenience store). This station has a
| decently sized parking lot and people who want to have
| yards can always find parking there.
| wumpus wrote:
| There are parts of the US, namely the parts where a
| majority of people live, that are densely-populated
| enough for trains.
| Aperocky wrote:
| You didn't read the local scale problem did you? New
| England is as populated as Europe but that's moot because
| you still need a car when you get to the station because
| suburbia.
| distances wrote:
| In European cities you have bus service in trackless
| suburbia. Tracks are always better but need bus service
| in addition as practically you won't be building tracks
| everywhere.
| mertd wrote:
| It's a catch 22. The excuse for not building proper
| transit is sprawl and the excuse for sprawl is not having
| proper transit. Sprawl always wins in the US.
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| It's a very short sighted excuse to use for not building
| transit. Sure if you don't have a land-use plan, but then
| why build the transit in the first place. These things
| always go hand-in-hand; many towns started as a train
| station.
| [deleted]
| nine_zeros wrote:
| US is big is a silly way to reject trains. So are China
| and India. Both have extensive train networks that allow
| people to take a train instead of long road trips. The
| trains are packed. Mobility is super high and abundantly
| available. Quality may differ but it's improving because
| people want it. Either way, it keeps cars off the road
| leading to less pollution, less metal junk and less
| inflation.
|
| US land is amazingly well suited for HSR and cities are
| well suited for subways. We also have the money. The only
| problem is political.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Why would I want me and my family on a packed train with
| our luggage and gear rather than in our comfortable,
| climate controlled, and spacious vehicle? Who would
| seriously vote for that?
|
| I'm grateful to live in a country where having a vehicle
| is normal and not just for the wealthy class. I'm happy
| to not be packed onto public transit if I want to take
| the family to the beach or go hiking or something.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > Why would I want me and my family on a packed train
| with our luggage and gear rather than in our comfortable,
| climate controlled, and spacious vehicle? Who would
| seriously vote for that?
|
| You don't need to. It's not like those countries with
| extensive train networks don't have cars and interstate
| highways. They do and people use them. The point is that
| in those countries, cheap options exist for all income
| brackets and all use cases.
|
| In America, it's a car or bust.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Poor people in America have cars generally speaking. In
| the USA our idea of poor is very far from what those
| countries consider poor to be. Our poor are solidly
| middle class by their standards.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Then again, at least the comparison with India doesn't
| work given the massive gulf in costs, safety standards
| and historical context (India's railway network being
| inherited from when it was a colony and there were less
| ethical 'restraints' on how to control costs).
|
| The US has a massive setup cost problem, any significant
| infrastructure project takes years of regulatory hurdles
| and then legal challenges as competitors and NIMBYs try
| everything they can to slow things down.
|
| Thus ending up being way more expensive than countries
| where they still have slums to ruthlessly tear down or
| land to seize from small-time farmers to make room for
| new infrastructure (not to imply that the way it works in
| the US is much better).
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > The US has a massive setup cost problem, any
| significant infrastructure project takes years of
| regulatory hurdles and then legal challenges as
| competitors and NIMBYs try everything they can to slow
| things down.
|
| This is exactly what I meant by political problems.
|
| > Thus ending up being way more expensive than countries
| where they still have slums to ruthlessly tear down or
| land to seize from small-time farmers to make room for
| new infrastructure (not to imply that the way it works in
| the US is much better).
|
| India razed slums and farms for trains, the US razed
| forests and farms for interstates. It's the same thing.
| Slums in India have a land value to them. The government
| doesn't get that land for free. Just pay out property
| owners market value+20% for infrastructure and build the
| thing that is so direly needed.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| goodpoint wrote:
| That does not say much about Spain. It's a failure of the
| US.
| golemiprague wrote:
| null_object wrote:
| > I live in Tokyo now, but I'm from Valencia, Spain. I knew the
| train there was bad when the local subway network, called
| "metrovalencia", was known locally as "metrovalenshit
|
| I'm sure your experience of your own hometown is accurate, but
| as a person who's visited Valencia a few times I've found the
| transport to be excellent: my whole family used the metro to
| get around without any hitches, and we were always surprised by
| how clean, quiet and efficient it was.
|
| The train between Valencia and Alicante was like boarding a
| luxurious airplane: an attendant ushered us on and came around
| with a food trolley. The ride was smooth and almost silent, and
| the ticket price included small extras like a free pair of
| headphones for listening to the onboard radio. This was all
| just regular economy.
|
| I think it may be a national characteristic to rundown your own
| country, as my family background is also Spanish and all my
| relatives always say Spain is a 'mierda' (shit) and speak
| lyrically about how wonderful everything must be in my current
| country (Sweden), but in fact the last few weeks the train
| service here in Sweden has been sporadic and continuously
| interrupted by various problems, as it often is both summer and
| winter. A Swede will rarely admit this to outsiders though.
|
| So I'm willing to give this initiative a very enthusiastic
| welcome, instead of instantly dismissing it as a gimmick, or
| gloomily bound to fail.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I don't want to invalidate your experience, but as a frequent
| public transport user here in CZ and an avid tourist who uses
| public transport abroad, I notice that the tourist experience
| tends to be a lot better for many reasons.
|
| First, tourists frequent certain routes that aren't the same
| as routes for daily commuters. They tend to be much shorter.
|
| Second, tourists rarely travel around in the rush hour and
| delays are not as crucial for them. You aren't under such a
| tight time budget when on holiday, unless you need to catch a
| plane or so. (And most people take a taxi to the airport,
| given that they travel with baggage.) On the other hand, even
| a 15 minute delay experienced four days out of five during an
| average work week gets old _fast_.
|
| Third, tourists tend to visit cities in periods of good
| weather, when long waiting etc. isn't very arduous.
|
| The real resiliency or fragility of any system tends to show
| under stress, and the most stress that a public transport
| system can be in is in the rush hour under inclement weather
| conditions (heavy snow, wind causing trees to fall on the
| track, freezing temperatures etc.), 30 km from the city
| centre.
|
| So those are precisely the conditions that tourists tend
| _not_ to encounter during their holidays, and form an
| inadequately rosy overall picture as a result.
| zcam wrote:
| I am a swiss expat living in Sweden and I can confirm the
| trains are terrible over here. They are rarely on time,
| cancelations are very common and incidents can deadlock an
| entire region. I had to take cabs a few times at the last
| minute after cancelations to not miss a flight. Let just say
| things are quite different in Switzerland.
|
| The only thing swedes do right in trains is that they are
| very civil, make it easy for bikes, strollers and old people
| to use them, but that's about it.
| franciscop wrote:
| Oh no I'm very happy for this initiative! My comment was not
| about the initiative, but about the corruption, incompetence
| and delays that plague the Spanish train systems. At least
| now it's free so that's great news! See in my other comment,
| they had to force airlines to make planes more expensive
| because people were using planes instead of the Madrid <=>
| Valencia train.
|
| Also I'm comparing it to Tokyo, which as others comment is a
| bit unfair since it's basically the best train network in the
| world.
| clairity wrote:
| you should also try the LA metro for how bad a transit
| network can be under poor management and corrupt city
| government. we have some of the best weather in the world,
| where multi-modal transportation is imminently viable, and
| yet we've built for cars and sprawl instead.
|
| i remember in tokyo that train headways during rush hour is
| as little as 90 seconds. and it's punctual as hell. in LA,
| we're lucky if we get down to 10 minutes, plus or minus 20
| minutes. LA is not quite as big or rich as tokyo, but it's
| on a similar scale, yet we have an order of magnitude worse
| public transit. it's so frustrating.
| downut wrote:
| We have _enjoyed_ riding metros in Mexico City and
| Guadalajara, and everywhere more prosperous where we have
| been, and were eager to try out the LA metro last
| February. NEVER AGAIN!
|
| The smell alone is sufficient, but the headways, good
| lord. Spotted several sets of foreign tourists just as
| astoundingly bewildered as we were.
|
| So we rode buses. Good god. Never again. Sorry LA. You
| suck. No, I don't enjoy driving in LA gridlock (done it
| many times). What an apex cultural disaster.
|
| I have to admit the transit was really cheap. I'd pay
| double for Paris's transit in a heartbeat.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| You make it sound that your experience visiting a few times
| to Valencia is more relevant overall than someone else's that
| lived there for decades, 7 days a week. As a local, you have
| more chances to see the big picture and all the problems that
| appear from time to time, that are invisible to the
| occasional tourist.
| jmyeet wrote:
| City public transportation, at a very minimum, should be free.
| The NYC Subway should be free. The Tube in London should be free.
|
| The standard American response is to object on the grounds that
| we're subsidizing something and it's a wasteful government
| expenditure. You know what else that applies to? Roads. We
| subsidize roads and everyone is OK with that.
|
| Charging for public transport is just a regressive tax on what
| are typically the lowest paid workers.
|
| Regional transportation is more interesting. I'm not sure how
| that'll work in practice but I'm open to it.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| 100% agree.
|
| but even if not free (free should be the goal) heavily
| discounted prices would already be good enough, especially for
| regular users that typically are the lowest paid workers.
|
| Also, the farther you travel, the higher the discount should
| be, to disincentivize the use of private transport.
| aembleton wrote:
| Making regional transport free will make it easier for people
| to choose to go by train rather than drive. This will help to
| improve air quality and congestion for goods transport and
| deliveries.
| 202206241203 wrote:
| _> We subsidize roads and everyone is OK with that._
|
| Maybe making people walk more would cut the medical
| expenditure.
| briga wrote:
| Public transit is already heavily subsidized. The revenue
| generated by ticket sales isn't nearly enough to cover overall
| expenses. That money has to come from somewhere, and unless
| you're going to raise taxes that means taking away from other
| public services. It's no wonder there aren't many politicians
| in North America advocating free public transit
| jmyeet wrote:
| No one makes that argument when it comes to roads. Why?
| Because usable public transportation disproportionately
| benefits poor people. Americans in particular are
| collectively fine with people just dying on the streets
| rather than being able to have and maintain a job and a roof
| over their head.
|
| I, for one, would support private passenger vehicles on the
| roads being subsidized to the level they are. I propose an
| annual tax based on the vehicle's value. I assume you support
| this because gax taxes don't "cover overall expenses" and
| "That money has to come from somewhere" right?
| Areibman wrote:
| Gas taxes and tolls are in place to fund roads. (Though in
| many states it just ends up in the general fund).
| jkarni wrote:
| In the US, money from gas taxes is used to fund non-road-
| infrastructure, but conversely money from other taxes is
| also used on road infrastructure. It seems like on the
| whole gas taxes and toll do not cover roads (see eg [1]).
|
| [1] https://taxfoundation.org/gasoline-taxes-and-user-
| fees-pay-o...
| scrollaway wrote:
| The taxes could absolutely come out of car users.
|
| Roads are way more subsidised than public transports. I
| suggest we make drivers feel their impact on cities.
|
| Of course it won't achieve anything, because it's impossible
| to make people understand how bad the current system is,
| especially in the US. So far gone...
| parkingrift wrote:
| The MTA spends almost $19 billion per year. You want it to be
| free? Go find $19 billion in the budget. The MTA spends 72%
| more than the entire NYDOT.
|
| Roads aren't subsidized they are funded with gasoline taxes and
| tolls.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > The MTA spends almost $19 billion per year. You want it to
| be free?
|
| 100%
|
| > Go find $19 billion in the budget.
|
| A combination of:
|
| 1. Taxing private vehicle ownership in NYC
|
| 2. Congestion charging, primarily in Manhattan
|
| 3. Charging for street parking below 110th Street; and
|
| 4. Increases in NY city and/or state income tax.
|
| > Roads aren't subsidized
|
| Yes, they are [1]:
|
| > The reason is simple math: The gasoline tax that bankrolls
| the federal Highway Trust Fund is politically untouchable,
| leading lawmakers and presidents of both parties to balk at
| raising it since 1993. But the money to pay for the nation's
| growing needs for roads, bridges and transit has to come from
| somewhere -- and the main answer has been to borrow it,
| adding it onto the yawning federal deficit.
|
| [1]: https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2021/06/30
| /dri...
| parkingrift wrote:
| Your evidence is lacking in evidence. NY isn't Florida, and
| federal gas taxes have nothing to do with state roads
| within New York. New York roads are paid with New York gas
| taxes and New York road tolls.
|
| As for the rest of your ideas they are trying to implement
| most of those just to cover other budget shortfalls. And
| they aren't going to generate anywhere NEAR $19 billion per
| year.
|
| Good luck convincing the highest taxed city in America to
| add $19 billion in additional taxes.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > ... federal gas taxes have nothing to do with state
| roads within New York
|
| Yes and no. I mean Interstates run through the state of
| New York obviously. But the funding picture for state and
| local roads is complicated and is funded by a mix of
| property taxes (and possibly other taxes) as well as
| state and federal grants [1]. Obviously those grants come
| from somewhere. Property taxes are more direct.
|
| We've decided to give road access away mostly for free
| (eg obviously there are toll roads and there really
| shouldn't be) as a political decision because of the
| collective benefit. I'm simply saying we can and should
| make that same decision for public transportation, which
| creates a lot of public good.
|
| > Good luck convincing the highest taxed city in America
| to add $19 billion in additional taxes.
|
| You realize New Yorkers are _already paying $19 billion a
| year_ right? So, at worst, it 's just changing how that
| $19 billion is generated. It's not additional tax. That's
| propaganda.
|
| My point is that rather than charging a server who earns
| $2/hour plus tips and an investment banker the same
| $125/month to use the Subway, we should collect that $19
| billion is a less regressive way.
|
| That $125/month will make a substantial difference to the
| low paid workers who are absolutely essential for the
| city to function but that investment banker paying
| slightly higher taxes will have absolutely no impact.
|
| [1]: https://www.osc.state.ny.us/files/local-
| government/publicati...
| quantumwannabe wrote:
| You do know that the bridge and tunnel tolls in Manhattan
| are used to subsidize mass transit? Drivers subsidize
| transit users in NYC, not the other way around.
| forinti wrote:
| In my city a big deal is made about the public bus service
| requiring a 50 million subsidy and no one thinks twice about
| spending 250 million (plus maintenance) on a single overpass.
| vrnvu wrote:
| I live in Spain. To clarify. Free means more taxes.
| dzonga wrote:
| I wish the UK will do this.
|
| Public transportation costs in the UK are totally criminal.
|
| yeah the trains are better than in the states.
|
| but it's totally criminal for trains to cost 30 quid from places
| that are like 30 mins from london.
|
| a single journey bus ticket in a small town 2.5 quid
| willyt wrote:
| I agree. I might need to take a train to London from a regional
| city on Monday. Cheapest ticket is PS150. Even with the high
| fuel prices currently it will cost me PS60 to drive instead.
| WalterBright wrote:
| One problem with free transit is people decide to live on it.
|
| https://mynorthwest.com/3462940/rantz-shocking-video-shows-l...
| vinnymac wrote:
| People live on transit, even where it is not free. I am curious
| how many more would live on transit, if it became free.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| In the US.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Free or extremely cheap transportation is a fascinating
| development. I always found it odd that the rhetoric around
| transportation was that it should make money. We don't expect
| other parts of the government to turn a profit. Why
| transportation?
|
| If Amtrak went that direction and made its transportation close
| to free, I wonder if we'd see more people try it out. Maybe it'd
| gain some popularity and we could finally see a shift away from
| cars. Public transportation is a difficult process because until
| the money is spent and the line is there, people are not sold.
| Whereas with cars, even if a highway is not built, people still
| have a car by default. Therefore the government needs to float
| money, either in infrastructure or in subsidized fares. At least
| subsidized fares is a little less binary than infrastructure.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I always found it odd that the rhetoric around transportation
| was that it should make money. We don't expect other parts of
| the government to turn a profit.
|
| While it shows a deep misunderstanding of the concept of a
| public service, there are lots of other parts of government we
| do expect to be self-sustaining on user fees. Like the Postal
| Service.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Postal service can be used in bulk though, this leaves a lot
| of space for misuse and abuse if the service was made free.
|
| I can't transport myself in bulk, at most I'll just go to a
| lot of places, which is probably good for the economy
| anyways.
| xxxtentachyon wrote:
| You could, however, functionally live on the transit system
| if it were free (or cheap enough, or fares unenforced), as
| we see in New York or Philadelphia. Granted, that's a
| problem of enforcement and other social ills as much as it
| is one of a cheap system.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Ticket fares are only a few dollars. You can panhandle
| that amount in less than an hour. Doesn't change
| anything.
| rbanffy wrote:
| If we had on board habitation facilities, it'd be
| workable. Doesn't seem very practical, however.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Any time there's a debate about building or enlarging a
| road, the idea of induced demand is brought up. More
| capacity leads to more demand (i.e. people bring able to
| travel more and/or further then they otherwise would have),
| causing traffic to increase over time until the new road is
| also congested.
|
| A similar pattern would emerge for any infrastructure
| investment, really. Some regulating force is needed, or it
| will emerge naturally via congestion and queuing.
|
| Edit: though once the tracks etc are built, public
| transport scales much better than roads so maybe it never
| becomes an issue.
| Aperocky wrote:
| That is correct, but induced demand here is capped by
| each person only able to travel so much. Even if the
| person lives on the train he could only occupy one seat
| at one time. And I would imagine a very small subset of
| population would actually want to do that.
| hadlock wrote:
| Right, but in his example, you are also capped by the
| ability to also only drive one car at a time. And yet
| highways are overflowing with cars during peak commute
| hours.
| chriswarbo wrote:
| Induced demand _itself_ isn 't a problem. The problem is
| that it counteracts congestion-relief efforts, which is
| often the (stated) motivation for things like road-
| widening.
|
| Whilst road-widening _can_ improve other things, like
| throughput (a congested three-lane road can shift more
| people than a congested two-lane road), once we start
| comparing such measures we find that public transit, etc.
| does _even better_.
|
| The same argument doesn't apply to induced demand _for
| transit_ (we can 't do _even better_ by switching to
| public transit, since that 's what we're already doing!).
| At _that_ point, maybe there aren 't any easier options;
| and maybe we have to build more (bus) lanes or rails, or
| run more vehicles, etc.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Because they don't have capacity for all of the
| population and also because public transportation is so
| terrible people prefer (or have) to endure congested
| traffic over it.
| hyperhopper wrote:
| > Even if the person lives on the train he could only
| occupy one seat at one time.
|
| Living in NYC I've seen hobos lying down across 6 seats
| on the subway smelling so bad that 10+ seats or an entire
| half of a car is vacated because of them.
| solar-ice wrote:
| Has New York by any chance... considered offering showers
| to people who need them, without tying nonsense
| requirements to said service?
| er4hn wrote:
| As a counterpoint, the us post office is expected to make money
| as well. There's a number of onerous rules around that in
| fact..
|
| During the Trump administration the head of education was a big
| fan of charter schools, which is a way of turning public
| schools into subsidized private schools.
|
| The concept of government providing services that are taxpayer
| funded and do not turn a profit is something that the
| Republican party became opposed to around, I guess, the Regan
| administration.
| rbanffy wrote:
| The US reached the point of being the only rich country where
| universal tax-funded healthcare is called "socialism".
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Services have to (at least in some part) listen to those who
| pay for it. As long as tickets are priced to cover costs, there
| is an incentive to ensure enough people travel and that it hits
| a comfort/safety/trade of that most people are happy with. When
| people are not paying, there is no incentive to do anything but
| what is required to get the government subsidy.
|
| In addition because it is so cheap there is a lot less
| competition from people taking the car instead, which means
| that there is even less pressure to make the train ride nicer.
| This hurts everybody, including those who do not have a car as
| an alternative.
|
| Basically: by paying the fee you get a vote. If it is free you
| don't.
| FrenchDevRemote wrote:
| >We don't expect other parts of the government to turn a
| profit. Why transportation?
|
| Because it's on demand, and a significant part of it is
| recreational, if every means of transportation was free, even
| just in a state or country, people would move a lot more and
| the cost would be astronomical
| solarkraft wrote:
| Car travel is often recreational, yet roads are typically not
| expected to make money; they're simply seen as something to
| enable economic activity and increase quality of life.
|
| Where's the difference?
| FrenchDevRemote wrote:
| Huge taxes on cars, oil, highways aren't always free,
| parking is expensive.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Parking is free nearly everywhere, highways are free
| nearly everywhere, and the US hardly taxes and cars at
| all compared to the rest of the developed world.
| tylergetsay wrote:
| Even today gas is taxed at almost 10%, every car on the
| road pays hundreds in fees for registration every year.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Yes, that's what I said. The US hardly taxes cars at all
| compared to the rest of the developed world.
| stop50 wrote:
| In germany (currently month 2 of 3) there is an ticket for 9EUR
| per month for using local public transport. Millions of tickets
| are sold and people are using the so much that the trains are
| litterally full. And the users are still enduring it.
|
| For those who don't know it: german trains have an lowsy
| reputation at best, no cooling in the summer, no heating in the
| winter and every user has to plan for the case the train is 15
| minutes or more late or broke on the way down.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Although it's been a few years since I lived in Germany I
| strongly disagree with this sentiment. I never had a bad
| train trip and I took them semi-often for work via Berlin-
| Munich and many times for pleasure around the country and
| continent. They far surpassed those in Eastern Europe for
| instance (although the train from Romania to Moldova was fun
| partially because it felt like time travel into the Soviet
| era)
| stop50 wrote:
| I had quite a few bad trips. Two of them left me at
| trainstations without any other transportation method (one
| of them was an fallen tree and the other an broken train).
| My median for delayed trains gets smaller but is still in
| the 15 minute region.
| manish_gill wrote:
| I'm writing this from a German train (Regional Bahn, not even
| the ICE), and it does have air conditioning. Not too crowded,
| smooth journey for the past 2 hours.
|
| I've travelled all across Europe, and German trains aren't
| what I would call "lousy".
| lmarcos wrote:
| You have to live in Germany to appreciate that. Otherwise
| all you get is a few data points.
| manish_gill wrote:
| Living here for 3 years, I think I can "appreciate" that.
| distances wrote:
| While the German train system can definitely improve, it's
| hard to come up with many countries that actually have a
| better service. France and Japan, maybe Spain? I don't know
| about the Netherlands and Nordics? It's still too rare to
| have such an extensive network.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| The german system is ok. Germans have reasons to complain
| but isn't terrible.
|
| What germany does horribly is ISP infra. It just sucks ass.
|
| Also, some gas and electricity pipes running south wouldn't
| hurt, but it's too late...
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Well, there will be more LNG terminals at the ports soon
| I would guess, but it does seem like there is a huge
| hesitancy to build more gas infrastructure that would
| diversify away from Russia because it isn't green
| rsynnott wrote:
| It's all relative, I think. I've met Americans living in
| Ireland who were amazed by how good Dublin's public
| transport was. "Good" is not a description that anyone in
| Dublin, or anyone in Europe, would use for Dublin's public
| transport.
|
| I've always thought that German transport was generally
| excellent when I'm over there, but then I'm from Dublin :)
| rbanffy wrote:
| > "Good" is not a description that anyone in Dublin, or
| anyone in Europe, would use for Dublin's public
| transport.
|
| Light rail in Dublin is quite good, but coverage isn't
| great. I used DART a few times, and it wasn't a nice
| experience - long waits and less than ideal trains. I
| traveled by rail between Dublin and Cork, however, and it
| was quite good - modern and comfortable, and relatively
| fast (Ireland is small and fast rail feels like overkill)
| rsynnott wrote:
| > Ireland is small and fast rail feels like overkill
|
| Not sure I'd say that; a modern TVG/ICE-type service
| could do Dublin to Cork in less than an hour, vs 2.5
| hours for the current service. That would be a game
| changer.
|
| There are vague plans for such a service, and more solid
| plans for upgrading to 200km/h (the trains already
| support this but the line would need upgrading).
| rbanffy wrote:
| It'd certainly remove some pressure on Dublin housing.
| stop50 wrote:
| Does someone in another country made a song about the bad
| public transport?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXjhszy2f9w
| GeckoEidechse wrote:
| Austria and Switzerland definitely have better train
| service than Germany. In fact the Austrian federal railways
| (OBB) even bought up the majority of DB's night train
| routes after DB considered decommissioning them ^^
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| That's not an accurate representation of the service at all.
| I'd say it's a lot closer to, say, New York City's subway
| service: something people love to hate, but that is, despite
| some flaws, quite successful, especially in comparison. The
| trains being full, literally, littoraly (to the coasts), or
| figuratively also calls to mind Woody Allen: "Nobody goes
| there anymore-it's too crowded".
|
| All trains, even regional ones, also have heating and
| cooling. And while Acs tends to be underpowered and is broken
| more often than it should be, I don't remember heating, which
| is much simpler anyway, to have similar problems.
| saghm wrote:
| > "Nobody goes there anymore-it's too crowded"
|
| I had never heard this quote attributed to anyone other
| than Yogi Berra before, and from looking it up, it doesn't
| seem like I'm misremembering that.
| jgwil2 wrote:
| I suspect GP is thinking of Woody Allen quoting Groucho
| Marx in _Annie Hall_ : "I wouldn't want to join any club
| that would have me as a member."
| hutzlibu wrote:
| " I don't remember heating, which is much simpler anyway,
| to have similar problems."
|
| On the contrary, it is way too warm in the trains in winter
| and badly vented. And you cannot change anything about it,
| because for safety reasons it is no longer possible to open
| a window even a tiny little bit.
|
| (And sometimes the AC is too cold in summer.)
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| If you want a preview of what free trains would look like, just
| go to the public library some afternoon.
| darkerside wrote:
| Clean, quiet, and productive?
| Chinjut wrote:
| wildrhythms wrote:
| Why don't you explain?
| conscion wrote:
| They're implying that the trains would be filled with
| homeless people.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| I've never seen a single public library filled with
| homeless people. What area is this?
| educaysean wrote:
| Many public libraries in California do struggle with
| homeless patrons. Librarians serving those libraries are
| sometimes required to take specific trainings to be able
| to provide help for the less amicable homeless crowd, and
| some are even equipped with narcans for emergencies.
| pawsforthought wrote:
| Then there's an argument for a housing-first policy to
| address homelessness, not one against free public
| transport.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Why do you say that? Is that what _you_ think?
| lowwave wrote:
| Should be ok if they are not harassing other passengers.
| Shugarl wrote:
| The great majority won't. But a part will, which is
| likely to be a problem.
| [deleted]
| burnished wrote:
| What a stellar advocacy for free public trains!
| iso1631 wrote:
| In the UK you get on a west coast train in the evening and it's
| rammed, with people paying 50p per mile.
|
| That service costs money to run. We could increase public
| spending to run the service, but you won't get more people on
| the train because it's already full.
|
| Now how are you going to increase that spending? Raise taxes?
| Cut other public services? Borrow more? Miraculous
| "efficiencies" no doubt.
|
| We could make it more cost effective, by building a new line
| instead, which would carry more people per operational cost.
| HS2 is this (1000 seats doing the journey in 1 hour for 2
| members of staff is 500 seats per person hour, vs 500 seats
| doing it in 2 hours for 3 members of staff which is 83 seats
| per personhour, thus staffing costs drop 84%). And that's what
| we're doing.
| solarkraft wrote:
| > We could increase public spending to run the service, but
| you won't get more people on the train because it's already
| full.
|
| Isn't increasing capacity the point of increasing spending?
| bennysomething wrote:
| There are a reasons I can think of for making money and
| charging for tickets:
|
| 1. The investment can come from the private sector, it takes
| the risk instead of burdening the tax payer.
|
| 2. Free rail for all burdens all with the cost of rail, it
| removes freedom of not paying for it.
|
| 3. No ticket pricing means no market signals that would show if
| the operator is running it's business poorly.
|
| 4. No adjustable pricing mean that the user has no reason to
| adjust their usage in terms of avoiding peak times or utilising
| quieter times.
|
| 5. No competition means no alternative, if the monopoly
| provides a terrible service that fleeces the tax payer, well
| tough luck for the user.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Taxpayers (and residents in general) of the USA pay out the
| nose for streets and roads, parking, car-centric planning
| requirements, massive subsidies to suburban sprawl, fossil
| fuel industry subsidies, lives lost and healthcare costs due
| to automobile pollution and traffic injuries/deaths, and the
| follow-on high cost of everything else in the society. (And
| let's not even get started on global climate change.)
|
| Paying for rail infrastructure is not fundamentally
| different, except insofar as it is generally cheaper, more
| efficient, and long-term much healthier for the society.
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| Probably the right solution is charging for all public
| roads, not making trains free.
| oblak wrote:
| And after that, make sure everyone pays for using public
| air
| treasurebots wrote:
| If there's some externality in the way that someone is
| using public air, like burning garbage in their backyard,
| then they should be expected to pay for it
| jon_adler wrote:
| As American housing is mostly sprawling and low density, it
| isn't terribly well suited to mass transport like rail in
| most places. Perhaps light rail or even (eventually) self
| driving cars might work better. Alternatively, change
| planning rules to encourage higher density although it is
| probably already too late for any meaningful change.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Might not be too late. Car culture has heavily influenced
| planning in the States. If the focus shifted to public
| transportation maybe the planning would follow, though
| it'd take a lot of time to change
| pawsforthought wrote:
| There's little point putting in transit if dense
| development isn't also allowed to follow. I concur though
| that it's not too late.
|
| Especially if you consider, car-centric development is
| bankrupting many smaller US cities. There's a strong
| economic case for promoting dense, mid-rise, mixed-use
| development: it brings in much more in property taxes
| relative to the cost of city services required.
|
| Simply put, every foot of road or pipe or power cable
| serves far more people (and economic activity) with dense
| development.
| mike00632 wrote:
| Keep in mind that we don't think this way about roads which
| are way more expensive and way more money-losing.
| redox99 wrote:
| Are they? You have tolls, fuel taxes, car registrations,
| etc.
| igammarays wrote:
| 1. The downside of private sector investments is that they
| will only invest in projects with the most lucrative returns,
| which comes at the cost of serving further and smaller
| communities, more decentralized communities, and other less-
| profitable sectors, which are in the broader long-term
| interests of the whole society to maintain (despite being
| unprofitable). See how privatizing bus routes leads to the
| shutdown of many smaller businesses and communities, because
| less profitable routes are not served. This makes life worse
| for everyone.
|
| 2. Good, it's a progressive tax, instead of being a
| regressive one. Transport costs disproportionately affect the
| lives of the working/labor class.
|
| 3. Market signals are only ONE factor to consider. And you
| don't need ticket sales to measure demand. Building
| infrastructure often creates demand where none existed
| before. Any long-term planning must also take into
| consideration unprofitable longer-term projects that provide
| immeasurable benefits.
|
| 4. Yes, the user has an incentive to avoid overcrowded
| trains. You don't need to fleece them for it.
|
| 5. There is no realistic alternative for large-scale
| infrastructure projects - these are natural monopolies. This
| is a rail network, not a software company. What is a user
| going to do if they don't like the service? Start a new rail
| company? An average citizen has more recourse with their
| local government than with privately-owned monopolies. They
| can vote at the ballot box every few years.
| jdasdf wrote:
| >1. The downside of private sector investments is that they
| will only invest in projects with the most lucrative
| returns, which comes at the cost of serving further and
| smaller communities, more decentralized communities, and
| other less-profitable sectors, which are in the broader
| long-term interests of the whole society to maintain
| (despite being unprofitable).
|
| I dispute your assertion that those things are the broader
| long term interests of the whole society. Their
| unprofitability is factual undeniable evidence that they
| are in fact unwanted "services" who are having resources
| poured in to them not due to their own merits but due to
| political decisions unrelated to their merits.
|
| I want to be very clear here, because there are many people
| who seem to be under the misconception that profitability
| is something bad.
|
| It is not.
|
| Profitability is literally a measure of how much value a
| given thing is providing to society. There is a 1 to 1
| relationship between profitability and societal and
| individual benefit.
|
| When you say "Public services don't need to be profitable"
| or express similar ideas, what you are actually saying is
| "Public services don't need to provide societal benefit".
| jmyeet wrote:
| > The investment can come from the private sector, it takes
| the risk instead of burdening the tax payer.
|
| Public-private "partnerships" are right-wing propaganda and
| disastrous to the public purse. Why? Because how they work in
| practice is the government absorbs all the risks while the
| private entity consumes all the profits. It's textbook rent-
| seeking behaviour.
|
| > Free rail for all burdens all with the cost of rail, it
| removes freedom of not paying for it.
|
| You mean like roads?
|
| > No ticket pricing means no market signals that would show
| if the operator is running it's business poorly.
|
| We don't need ticket sales to track total passenger
| movements.
|
| > No adjustable pricing mean that the user has no reason to
| adjust their usage in terms of avoiding peak times or
| utilising quieter times.
|
| Another way to put that is that people have more opportunity
| and mobility. I'm completely fine with that.
|
| > No competition means no alternative, if the monopoly
| provides a terrible service that fleeces the tax payer, well
| tough luck for the user.
|
| When is there ever competition in public transportation? Why
| is competition viewed as a good thing for what is an
| essential service? Do we need competition for the post office
| now to satisfy free-market cultists?
| hezag wrote:
| > Do we need competition for the post office now to satisfy
| free-market cultists?
|
| Yeah, unfortunately that's exactly what they are trying to
| do today in Brazil.
| bennysomething wrote:
| It's exactly the same as the government not paying for
| cars.
|
| The UK recently privatised it's post office, there's lots
| of competition in its postal market (thank goodness).
|
| The UK railways where private before 1948, then
| nationalised, it didn't work out well. Then privatised 40
| or so years later because the government couldn't afford
| the investment required.
|
| Are you in favour of nationalised air travel? UK tried that
| too and it was terrible. Exactly the same for telecoms. I'm
| just glad we don't have a nationalised food supply.
| willyt wrote:
| Most rail investment in the UK is ultimately paid for by
| the government. E.g HS2, line upgrades etc. Train
| companies might make a contribution to the cost of buying
| new trains through the cost of leasing them from the
| government regulated monopoly companies that buy them
| with government money. We basically have a system where
| everything is paid for by government but in a really
| complicated way involving lots of complicated contracts
| written by very expensive lawyers. Our trains are now
| some of the slowest most expensive and most uncomfortable
| in Europe.
| wdb wrote:
| UK railways are terrible, so you are saying it was _even_
| worse when it was nationalised? It's expensive, a lot of
| strikes, and trains barely arrive on time, and the trains
| are bad
| regularfry wrote:
| It was underinvested-in, but relatively cheap to the
| traveler. Now it's underinvested-in and hideously
| expensive.
| eastbound wrote:
| 6. Annoying people on board. I simply don't take the train
| anymore in France, there are 76 onboard thefts a day declared
| in Marseilles only, they are loud, they are not disrespectful
| but downright playing with the first one who complains, and
| most importantly, they have the controller siding with them.
|
| All of this because the CAF gives them fares for almost-
| nothing, which is affordable when you have drug money.
|
| No to free fares.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| This is a separate problem imo. Why can't we have both free
| fares and better policing to keep the riffraff under
| control?
| ttymck wrote:
| Re (2): public roads burden all with the cost of roads (and
| inducing car travel). We don't expect roads to make money, as
| far as I'm aware.
| foogazi wrote:
| But cars are not free
| itronitron wrote:
| shoes aren't free either
| zeusk wrote:
| nor is their fuel - electric or oil.
| solar-ice wrote:
| Cool, so you would like the Government to fund
| construction and maintenance of the rails as long as the
| operation of trains is ticketed? :)
| baud147258 wrote:
| For roads, it depends on the country. For example in France
| you have to pay toll money to use most interstates
| kergonath wrote:
| Yeah, and that's after they had been publicly funded,
| amortised, and then sold on the cheap to private company.
| The perfect example of how not to do it.
|
| It used to be done properly, for things like long bridges
| and such, where there would be a toll until the invested
| money was recovered.
|
| Also, there is still the extensive network of nationales,
| departementales, and other streets and avenue that are
| still free.
| kergonath wrote:
| We also all benefit from decent public transport, even
| drivers because it helps with congestion. (Also, as several
| other mentioned, we don't seem to be very reluctant
| subsidising roads and car-related infrastructure despite the
| issue being very similar). Your arguments sound nice in a
| vacuum, but are not very convincing when considering the
| broader context of society.
| alistairSH wrote:
| To number 2, we all pay for it one way or another and if it
| exists or not. IE, without good public transit, subsidized or
| not, we sit in auto gridlock and/or "overspend" on auto
| infrastructure. People have to get around and we (USA)
| currently spend and build on some of the least efficient
| transport (individual auto for almost all transit needs).
| amluto wrote:
| All of the above is true for roads, yet governments mostly
| don't charge for roads.
| mantas wrote:
| For road, government is providing the road and public pays
| for bus ticket, personal car, delivery services etc.
|
| For rail, usually railway building is already covered by
| government. People only pay for the train. Upkeep is
| usually covered by all sorts of subsidies.
| zeusk wrote:
| Where do you think your car registration fee, fuel tax and
| toll road fee go?
| wdb wrote:
| I don't believe it only gets paid from the revenue of
| taxes that are relevant to car usage. Probably a share of
| it is paid by what I pay in income taxes
| acchow wrote:
| > was that it should make money
|
| Most public transit isn't profitable, but they take fares to
| partially fund their operating costs. This aligns incentives
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Not really, the government has a competing incentive for
| people to consume transportation as it has knock-on effects
| on economic activity and tax revenue while at the same time
| driving down the marginal cost of transportation
| tylergetsay wrote:
| Amtrak is more expensive than a flight for a reason, making it
| free would make it inaccessible
| stormbrew wrote:
| > If Amtrak went that direction and made its transportation
| close to free, I wonder if we'd see more people try it out
|
| My understanding is that in north America the big problem with
| passenger rail is less cost and more the fact that there's a
| bias towards freight in track right of ways. Even if you're
| willing and happy to pay a lot to travel by train, scheduling
| is still likely to be screwed up somewhere by a big ass freight
| train in the way and there's nothing you can do about it.
|
| Edit to add after a double check: I guess in the US it's
| technically the law that passengers be given priority but it's
| poorly (or just not) enforced[1].
|
| [1]
| https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...
| Stevvo wrote:
| That sounds like the perfect situation for high speed rail;
| take the passengers off the slow rails completely freeing
| them up for freight. The high speed lines themselves would be
| massive loss leaders financed by the freight.
|
| Possible and done in other countries, but less feasible in
| the US because many existing lines are privately owned.
| novok wrote:
| You can make a targeted tax to get something financially
| equivalent.
|
| Politically popular although? Probably not. Americans
| really really love their cars & suburbs and would also get
| angry at everything getting more expensive due to higher
| freight costs.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Amtrak is more expensive than flights majority of the time.
| smegger001 wrote:
| And Amtrak is often more expensive than car travel. I
| posted this last time it came up a few days ago but it
| bares repeating here;
|
| >I wish the train was more economical then I could take the
| train more but it is not economical (on the west coast of
| the US). I live approx half way between Seattle WA and
| Portland OR and there is a train station within walking
| distance of my home. Every time I have checked the price of
| a Amtrak ticket to either city it was significantly cheaper
| to drive and pay for parking then to buy a single train
| ticket.
| remram wrote:
| Forget driving your car, on some routes Amtrak is slower
| and more expensive than _Uber_ (for two people, not even
| considering the fact that you pick your time and get
| dropped at your door)
| bogomipz wrote:
| That bias is correct, at least outside of the North East
| corridor. Amtrak owns most of the track in the North East
| Corridor which incidentally is the only place it is
| profitable. Outside of this corridor the tracks are mostly
| owned by 5 railroads [1]. Passenger rail is supposed to have
| priority as Amtrak was the entity created in order to relieve
| railroads from being required to provide passenger service.
| This however is an area of a lot of friction. For a recent
| example of this mess see"
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/06/amt.
| ..
|
| [1] https://soundingmaps.com/the-largest-railroads-in-us/
| itronitron wrote:
| I've ridden Amtrak a few times on different routes, TX to CA
| as a child, midwest to DC as a student, and northeast to
| southeast (NE corridor +) with a pregnant wife.
|
| The main issue with train travel in the US is that many
| passengers are going to need a car when they reach their
| destination.
|
| If I could pick one major rail investment for the US it would
| be to follow I-95 from Florida to New England. There is a lot
| of commute and vacation traffic along that interstate (I-95)
| that can be stressful and people would probably happily move
| over to Amtrak if the service guarantees are good.
| alar44 wrote:
| I'd say the biggest issue is that trains are slow as fuck.
| If I take a plane I can get to either coast in a few hours
| from the Midwest. A train will take 1-2 days.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| There's _no way_ to make a coast-to-coast trip in the US
| as fast as a plane ever. It 's like, what, 4500km? Even
| with the fastest regular passenger train in the world
| which runs at 350 km/h, this will be a 12 hour trip and
| that's not including the time the train will spend below
| that speed e.g. for stops. Compared to that, your average
| Airbus A380 hits 900 km/h as regular cruise speed,
| rendering that into a much better 5 hour trip.
|
| Not to say high-speed rail doesn't have its uses - by far
| not, the chief one being replacing flights < 2 hours -
| but anything above the 2 hour flight time is better kept
| served by plane.
|
| [1] https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-
| fastest-trains...
| herewulf wrote:
| You make good points but you forgot to factor in the 2
| hours early that you need to show up at the airport.
| Getting on and off a train can take only minutes.
|
| I've only ridden Amtrak once but I guess there are also
| security requirements that do take some time also (as
| opposed to most European countries).
|
| I've also experienced lots of unexpected delays on
| flights whereas trains seem to be exceptionally on time
| (especially in a country like Germany). You're also
| assuming a direct flight also (though this is probably
| more related to cost which is another issue).
|
| All in all, a coast to coast journey that takes 12 hours
| vs. 7 doesn't seem so bad if:
|
| - I can spend maybe 8 of it sleeping in a bed - The
| difference is 5 hours - I can eat some real meals in a
| dining car - I can walk around reasonably
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I semi-recently (two years ago) did an Amtrak trip from
| DC to LA and there was 0 security. I got there early
| because I didn't want to miss a leg of a 3 day train trip
| but there was no need.
| ghaff wrote:
| >I've only ridden Amtrak once but I guess there are also
| security requirements that do take some time also (as
| opposed to most European countries).
|
| Not in my experience. You show up at the station and walk
| onto the train. Dread that changing one of these days
| based on some incident.
| jb3689 wrote:
| I'm visiting Peru soon. People choose to take day-long
| bus rides rather than a <2h flight getting from Lima to
| Cusco. I find it hard to believe that a train wouldn't
| have at least some interest for budget travelers or
| people who value time less than most of us here
| travelingteach wrote:
| I live in Peru. There actually are incredibly expensive
| trains connecting Cusco/Puno/Arequipa. No one really uses
| them.
|
| The problem is the terrain doesn't lend itself to trains
| at all without a super expensive investment, and the
| population of Peru is spread out so much once you leave
| Lima.
|
| Flights in general are terrible in Latin America in terms
| of cost which is why the bus is popular. More so
| international but even domestic is pricey for the quality
| and distance. Plus stopping in Paracas/Nazca/Arequipa
| makes the bus a good way to cheaply hit those spots.
| Flying back to the start is a good move though
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Any idea on why flights are so expensive there? I felt
| the same way traveling in Africa where it was around the
| same cost to fly back to any major EU capital as it was
| to go to any other major destination in Africa even when
| relatively close (e.g. Doula to Lagos) and I'm just
| wondering if there's some dynamic at play given you can
| get super cheap flights in Europe and somewhat in the
| U.S.
| travelingteach wrote:
| Africa seems even next level in terms of price.
|
| I think lack of competition is a big problem. There
| aren't a ton of major airlines here. The population is
| also pretty spread out compared to Asia/Europe.
|
| Domestic is usually okay. I just recently flew to the
| edge of Peru to visit Bolivia by land because it saved
| enough money to justify the extra time.
| baby wrote:
| What about the west coast? Sf to sj? Sf to los angeles?
| Sf to san diego? Or seattle?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| If you also take into account the time you spend at an
| airport and the possible slowdown from the wind (900km/h
| is airspeed) while having a theoretical but technically
| feasible 450km/h high speed train as well as the time it
| takes to go to and from airports (you can put train
| stations downtown and near public transport) you can
| actually achieve parity in most situations, or near
| parity in others
| prmoustache wrote:
| Also, night trains.
|
| Who cares if it takes 8 to 12 hours if you board the
| train, have dinner there, sleep a good night and have
| breakfast before arriving.
| ghaff wrote:
| I've taken night trains and have liked them. But for a
| lot of business setting people would rather take an early
| morning flight than lose a night with family.
| Macha wrote:
| I'd say the cut off time is more like four hours, with
| the delays incurred by airport security and the fact that
| airports are huge and therefore more likely to be located
| further out from city centres.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Sure, but building a rail network that is able to compete
| with four hours of flight is orders of magnitude more
| expensive than building out decent HSR between major
| clusters of larger cities (e.g. California HSR).
| Glawen wrote:
| In France they closed flights up to 500km competing with
| TGV. 500km is less than 2h in TGV, you show up 5mim
| before departure, you have no annoying security check and
| stupid questions asked, and you arrive in city center.
| Planes cannot compete with this offer.
|
| Even more since SNCF launched their low cost TGV (Ouigo).
| novok wrote:
| Trains are ideal for middle distances. About 1 or 2 hour
| flight equivalencies. DC to NYC, Tokyo to Osaka, SF to LA
| or Seattle, The Houston, San Antionio/Austin, Dallas
| triangle, etc. NYC to SF is not ideal for a high speed
| train, take an airplane then.
|
| With a high speed train you can have downtown to downtown
| service, not need any security checks or slow onboarding
| / off-boarding processes and more, which eats about 1.5
| hours minimum on each side.
| baby wrote:
| I personally always check trains when I travel and end up
| not traveling because of this. It just takes too long to
| take the train.
| amf12 wrote:
| > The main issue with train travel in the US is that many
| passengers are going to need a car when they reach their
| destination.
|
| It's not a big issue as you may think. This is the case
| with air travel too, but people would gladly fly and then
| rent a car. The biggest barrier is the cost and the time it
| takes.
| cormacrelf wrote:
| Unless you make the trains go 900km/h, you are talking
| about very different things. "I need to rent a car at the
| end of this train journey, which itself is about the
| speed of a car" is dumb -- just rent the car, don't waste
| money buying a train ticket as well, and travel on your
| own terms. So the only thing it offers is being cheaper
| than renting a car for one extra day for long journeys.
| petre wrote:
| > So the only thing it offers is being cheaper than
| renting a car for one extra day for long journeys
|
| Nope. It also offers not having to drive. I can read a
| book on a train, which I can't do in a small car even if
| I don't drive because I'll get car sick. I can even walk
| around and have luch in the train restaurant, go to the
| bathroom without having to stop.
| pawsforthought wrote:
| Going by train still has the benefit of being able to do
| something while you travel. Especially relevant for solo
| business trips.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| If they were the same cost I'd pick the train every time.
| I can relax, sleep, read a book or get some work done.
| ghaff wrote:
| It depends. It's definitely usually easier to get to your
| hotel (often by walking) in NYC from Penn than from any
| of the airports. Less true in Boston (though there is a
| suburban stop south of the city) and in DC Reagan is
| pretty convenient on the metro. But, generally, downtown
| train stations with good transit tilt towards train
| travel relative to airports an hour out, especially
| without good transit.
| konschubert wrote:
| And I think that's the right choice, if a choice is needed.
| Much more impactful to get the trucks off the roads than the
| cars.
| Macha wrote:
| Per road vehicle. But 1 train car fits what, 1.5 trucks
| worth of cargo? Versus 20-30 passengers. Is it better to
| eliminate 2 truck trips or 10+ personal car trips?
| konschubert wrote:
| If you look at the wear and tear on the roads, then 30
| passenger cars are much better than two trucks.
|
| If you look at emissions, I guess this is a pretty close
| one, too. And since so much freight is already on the
| rail in the US, this is the much easier fruit to pick.
| notatoad wrote:
| this is a chicken-and-egg problem.
|
| our railways prioritize freight because that's the customer
| that actually uses the system. as long as passengers are
| rare, there's no reason to prioritize them. if passenger
| trains were actually a critical part of the transportation
| network, i'm sure we'd stop letting freight pre-empt them.
| andbberger wrote:
| feet wrote:
| Passengers are rare? Most times when I've taken Amtrak, its
| packed
| ben_w wrote:
| That tells you the ratio of train seats to train
| passengers, not the ratio of train passengers to other
| transport users, nor the ratio of spending on train
| conveyances for human passengers versus cargo.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Passengers are rare? Most times when I've taken Amtrak,
| its packed
|
| Certainly compared to other modes in most circumstances.
| If, on a particular route, there's one train a week and
| 100 planes a day, the train can still be packed while
| "train passengers" are still rare.
|
| IIRC, Amtrak was created because the railroads were
| losing money on passenger traffic and wanted to get rid
| of the service. I imagine that's because the service had
| a lot more competitors than it did in rail's heyday.
| feet wrote:
| Four trains per day on the route I am referencing
|
| I don't know why people are bringing up hypotheticals
| that are so far from reality like one train per week.
| That's just not how trains are scheduled with Amtrak. I
| take the train on a regular basis and your example is
| entirely removed from the reality that I have personally
| observed.
|
| How many planes are there per day _on a single route_ in
| the Midwest? Because I doubt its hundreds
| stephenhuey wrote:
| I've only seen that in the northeast. Don't think you'll
| see much of that riding from Houston to Chicago or
| heading out west!
|
| Edit: While I haven't ridden trains in every corner of
| the USA, the best I saw were in the northeast, and I did
| have a nice ride from Seattle to Portland once, but in
| middle America you almost never hear of someone riding a
| train (my grandmother rode them in Texas in the 1930s and
| a buddy of mine took the 24-hour trip from Texas to
| Illinois one time, but those are the only stories I have
| personally heard around here).
| pessimizer wrote:
| I've started and ended 100 Amtrak trips in Chicago. The
| train is one of the reasons Chicago (and Memphis) exists.
| feet wrote:
| The Midwest is what I am directly referencing
| ericd wrote:
| Aren't the tracks owned by the companies that run the
| freight trains, rather than Amtrak?
| notatoad wrote:
| yes. and one of the ways to stop letting freight trains
| preempt passenger trains would be for amtrak to build
| their own tracks. but as long as amtrack has to rely on
| operating revenue for that sort of project, it's never
| going to happen because they can't attract enough
| customers.
| closeparen wrote:
| Build their own tracks where? Through and adjacent to
| both natural environments and people's homes. The America
| where you could do that kind of thing is long gone.
| Joeri wrote:
| As someone who has chosen to get rid of my car and rely on
| public transport I would say the biggest problem public
| transport faces is quality and not cost. For people to trade in
| their cars connections need to be fast, frequent and a
| comfortable ride. This requires large investments and having
| high enough fares helps offset those investments. Making it
| free makes it harder to achieve that level of quality, so while
| it will sway the most price-conscious group, it would never
| convince the masses to take a train instead of their car.
| cormacrelf wrote:
| If I were a transport operator, I would be worried about
| losing access to the trip data you get from people constantly
| scanning their tickets at the start and end of journeys. How
| do you know how people are using your services if nobody is
| scanning tickets any more? Maybe counting passengers gives
| you enough info to deliver capacity at required times.
| Hopefully the need for data on what actual trips people are
| taking (to influence line design etc) is not so necessary
| that operators start doing facial recognition. Yuck.
| elashri wrote:
| In my city, the metro decided that this summer it will be
| fare-free on weekends. The bus operators count people in
| their system as they board. This is how they simply track
| the usage.
| novok wrote:
| You don't need image recognition to count passengers, there
| are other sensor types that could detect bodies. Or you
| could get rid of the facial recognition parts and just
| focus and record body shapes, explicitly avoiding trying to
| track or identify individuals.
| cormacrelf wrote:
| You missed the distinction between counting passengers on
| a platform or in a bus, and figuring out what people are
| using public transport for. "When people get on at this
| stop, how far do they travel? Are they having to sit on
| trains for 2 hours or do they only go a few stops? Should
| we draw a new line here or there?" That's a different
| question from "how many trains do we need to dedicate to
| this line between 8 and 9am on a Thursday?" which can be
| answered by counting. You can kinda guess with the
| numbers only, but many paid transport systems have had
| near perfect info on this their entire service lives. It
| would be weird to lose it.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > many paid transport systems have had near perfect info
| on this their entire service lives.
|
| Only if they were entirely built in the last decade and a
| half. During the hundred years before that, nobody was
| tracking riders with anything approaching that type of
| precision, and public transportation was better.
| weaksauce wrote:
| you could always use the guy collecting tickets to collect
| that information. or use turnstiles. or a myriad other
| ways.
| monksy wrote:
| As someone who has dealt with Lightfoot's destruction of the
| CTA. (Well not so much as destruction as much as intentional
| neglect and lying about it over a long period of time) I
| completely agree with this. CTA used to be mostly reliable
| and good. Now, there are serious questions as far as to trust
| it to go out drinking or using it for everyday commuting for
| work.
|
| As a result our roads have become chaotic to drive on.
| scoofy wrote:
| I will push back there. Automobiles _rarely_ pay the cost for
| their transportation infrastructure. Some of the roads are
| good, some are bad, some are congested some are clear. The
| populations adjust their life around the infrastructure not
| the other way around. Since the streets are already free, for
| public transit to compete in any way, it also ought to be
| free... we should expect people to adjust to ideal public
| transit living locations for the exact same reason.
| closeparen wrote:
| >The populations adjust their life around the
| infrastructure not the other way around
|
| Public policy should try to make people's lives better, not
| worse.
| ketzo wrote:
| Well, the streets aren't free, because you need to buy a
| car to use them. That's a little pedantic, but I think it's
| super relevant.
|
| The problem is that as a passenger/consumer, with a car,
| it's very easy to decide how much to pay for my _own
| personal_ level of ride quality.
|
| I can spend $2k on an old Camry, or I can spend $200k on a
| Bentley, but either way, I have _almost_ total control
| (potholes notwithstanding).
|
| It's really not possible to have that kind of personal
| control when you're looking at public transit.
| llukas wrote:
| You can spend $200k on Bentley and still have nowhere to
| park it at your destination.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| people literally live on the public transportation in
| cities.. you have to charge something due to irrational
| humans
| pessimizer wrote:
| Or you can make rules about living on public
| transportation and enforce them with responders who will
| offer them a more comfortable place to sleep.
| baby wrote:
| Just increase taxes for everyone instead of spending a ton of
| money on trying to catch people not paying their fare or
| technology to process payment.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> the biggest problem public transport faces is quality and
| not cost_
|
| There is an interesting, very American, solution, which is
| ubiquitous, active surveillance on every form of public
| transport. Not just for violent threats, but for enforcing
| (current) vandalism, littering, and even assault laws cheaply
| and at scale. For the low low cost of a dystopian panopticon
| you could have, theoretically, a cheaply maintained public
| transportation system. (The other option, which many other
| countries employ, is a rigorous culture of respect for public
| places and public facilities -- for example Japan and
| Northern Europe.)
| balderdash wrote:
| While I don't think this stuff needs to make money, I think the
| goal should be at least be to break even, as people's
| willingness to pay seems to be the best proxy of its actual
| utility to society. (E.g. trying to avoid bridges to nowhere
| [1])
|
| The question then becomes how much if at all do want to
| subsidize transportation.
|
| [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| They still definitely need to track usage in order to know
| which services to schedule.
| clairity wrote:
| yes, free inevitably means unvalued and creates distortions
| in markets that lead to unintended consequences (like
| homeless people using trains as makeshift housing). in
| contrast, market competition is one of the reasons cited by
| the tokyo transit system for why they're so good.
|
| also, economists are capable of estimating the ratio of
| private good to public good for a transit system, and we can
| simply apportion the funding of the network accordingly. if
| 40% of the value of transit accrues to the public, then pay
| that part out of taxes and set fares so that they pay for the
| other 60%. i'd rather have a system that responds in some
| proportion to market signals than one that is entirely immune
| to them.
|
| in LA, they're trying to make transit free, and while i'd
| benefit from this, i oppose the initiative on these grounds.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Have you used Tokyo's multi corp transit? It can be a real
| headache.
|
| Also, the MTA is private (mostly) and the subway costs a
| fare, yet there's homeless folks everywhere on the trains.
| Implementing a fare !== homeless people not setting up shop
| in subway cars or on the platforms.
|
| * the homeless and housing situation is a deeper issue with
| many variables. Just pointing at the claim that was made
| clairity wrote:
| my experience of tokyo was as a tourist some 10 years
| ago, so i can't speak to the breadth of the transit
| experience there. i just remember being very impressed
| with the quantity and punctuality of trains and don't
| remember any homelessness. that's not to say i saw no
| homelessness in tokyo, but it seemed tiny compared to LA.
| i also rode the shinkansen between tokyo and osaka, which
| felt almost like flying, in contrast to amtrak's acela
| train on the east coast, which feels only slightly faster
| for a few short periods.
| coryrc wrote:
| Huh? The Pasmo card can be used for basically all transit
| in Tokyo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasmo
|
| Every train and tram is on schedule. In what way is it a
| "real headache"?
| 7952 wrote:
| Surely the free road system is the most serious distortion
| in the market. And free access to public transport could
| help rebalance that. We may end up with unintended
| consequences, but that is likely to be better than the
| negative consequences we live with right now.
| clairity wrote:
| yes, we should better price in the cost of free roads
| rather than try to rebalance by making public transit
| free. i'd suggest making registration fees even more
| contingent on length and weight of vehicles, on a
| superlinearly escalating scale (e.g., some folks suggest
| to the 4th power due to that being the factor of weight
| on road wear).
| sam0x17 wrote:
| Pretty easy to break even if it were fully funded by taxes.
| Would be a net public good as well.
| ljw1001 wrote:
| Great idea. Maybe we should try paying the cost of car travel
| via gas taxes. We could start by just paying the for the
| entire road, bridge, and highway network, and then add in the
| costs associated with climate change.
| diordiderot wrote:
| Better by vehicle weight as road damage is exponential
| function of weight
| ghaff wrote:
| And that's important as well because a lot of people who
| don't personally drive cars on the roads use goods
| transported in that manner, take long distance busses,
| etc.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Not to mention the about 30000 killed in traffic every year
| in the US.
| ruined wrote:
| it's possible to measure or estimate ridership, and make
| judgements that way
|
| also, like highways it's probably on some level subject to
| induced demand
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Transit is far moreso.
|
| Noone is going to ride two disconnected bus services that
| run four times a day and require walking 30 minutes in
| between.
|
| Add a connection and make them all run every 30 minutes and
| suddenly it's viable.
|
| Add a metro with right of way that runs every 5 minutes and
| has 5 minute walk or 2 minute walk + bus coverage to the
| entire city and why would you spend money on a car?
| ghaff wrote:
| >why would you spend money on a car?
|
| So you can leave the city. Even people I know who live in
| cities with decent transit systems that they use mostly
| still own cars to get away on weekends, do larger
| shopping trips, etc.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| Surely people able to go place to place easily and quickly
| (and presumably generate tax income at those places) is worth
| more than whatever fare they paid to get there?
| mantas wrote:
| What if it could be covered by a zoom call and society
| wouldn't have to foot the rail bill? Trains cost quite a
| fortune.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Yes, except for the car industry, which has a massive
| lobbying arm.
| balderdash wrote:
| I think this is true in aggregate, but not at the margin
| where you are making the decisions. Marginal utility should
| theoretically decline as you increase capacity (five lane
| road, six lane road, seven lane road - ignoring capacity
| induced demand for a moment), if the marginal rider is not
| willing to spend $2.5 to get where they are going how
| valuable can the economic activity be at their destination?
| matkoniecz wrote:
| I would expect the same expectations also from air and car
| traffic.
|
| If railways are expected to break even, then I expect the
| same from public funding in roads and airports.
|
| Using the same metrics.
| parkingrift wrote:
| That's not going to work out in your favor for the simple
| fact that roads already exist and maintenance is extremely
| cheap. It's paid for with gasoline taxes.
|
| Whereas rail is unbelievably expensive. The MTA budget for
| the NYC metro area is $18.6 billion. Compare that to the
| $11.8 billion budget for the entire New York State
| Department of Transportation.
|
| ...and that's for an existing rail system.
| eropple wrote:
| How are you pricing in car externalities?
| ncphil wrote:
| The NYC subways alone delivered over a billion rides a
| year, even with Covid.
|
| Highway maintenance is anything but cheap, unless you
| only do the barest minimum as has been done in the US for
| decades.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| The MTA is also known for being riddled with
| mismanagement and waste. If they worked on optimizing
| their use of funds/directed funds towards worthwhile
| improvements, credible vendors, and rooted out
| waste/corruption, that number would likely be a bit
| (maybe more than a bit) lower.
|
| Not to mention, the 2nd ave line seemed like a big waste.
| snakeboy wrote:
| >...roads already exist and maintenance is extremely
| cheap. It's paid for with gasoline taxes.
|
| According to [0] no state derives more than 71% of its
| "State & Local Road Spending" from gas taxes. Unclear to
| me what proportion of the spending is maintenance though.
|
| The best number I could find for maintenance cost was
| [1], which says in 2015, the average per-mile maintenance
| cause of US roads is $28,020.
|
| Can anyone help find a comparable figure for rail
| maintenance?
|
| [0] https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/
| [1] https://azmag.gov/Portals/0/Documents-
| Ext/FLCP/Roadway-Maint...
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| That combines maintenance with new projects though, the
| GP was only refering to maintaining existing roads.
| diordiderot wrote:
| > maintenance is extremely cheap
|
| 200+ Billion each year & 5th largest category of state
| and local public spending behind education, general
| welfare, and healthcare
|
| > It's paid for with gasoline taxes.
|
| Generated 52 billion so ~25%
| wizofaus wrote:
| I've seen it estimated elsewhere that a km of heavy rail
| track is slightly cheaper to build than a single freeway
| lane. To what degree all the surrounding infrastructure,
| maintenance and externalities change that equation I'm
| not sure, but a single track is surely _capable_ of
| moving a lot more passengers per hour than one freeway
| lane. Of course there may be relatively few situations it
| actually does, but if your goal is to get as many people
| from A to B as quickly and cheaply as possible, rail is
| surely cheaper.
| gfaster wrote:
| > roads already exist
|
| The implication in this is that railroads don't already
| exist, which is simply false. In fact, nearly every town
| in the Midwest established before 1950 were built on a
| railroad line. A few notable examples are Las Vegas, Los
| Angeles, Sacramento, Birmingham, Chicago, St. Louis, and
| Portland Oregon. Moreover, many suburbs were formed
| around a streetcar line, which were later torn up to let
| cars drive there instead.
|
| > maintenance is extremely cheap. It's paid for with
| gasoline taxes
|
| That is demonstrably false. Gas taxes as of 2011 do not
| cover road maintenance (at most it's RI with almost 80%
| and median of about 45% [1]). Furthermore, the federal
| gas tax (which is supposed to pay for the interstate
| system) hasn't been increased since 1993, and isn't
| indexed to inflation. The United States Highway Trust
| Fund has been relying on non-fuel tax revenue since 2008,
| and that doesn't look to be changing any time soon [2].
| Of course, regardless of the actual costs of effective
| maintenance, you can make any public works project much
| cheaper by simply not maintaining it. If maintenance was
| actually "extremely cheap," then it stands to reason that
| the US would be getting more than a 'D' on roads [3].
| Even after all of that, it still doesn't factor in the
| legal requirements for private expenditure on roads, such
| as minimum parking requirements and extensive R1 zoning.
| It also doesn't factor in the vast negative externalities
| of cars (yes, even electric cars).
|
| > Whereas rail is unbelievably expensive
|
| I'm going to ignore that you chose the MTA, a famously
| corrupt organization that is responsible for tunneling
| under the densest metro area in the country, as a
| baseline for the cost of rail. Instead I'm going to point
| out that car roads have nearly every bureaucratic
| advantage in the US, for a multitude of reasons. There is
| a lot of nuance to this, but for anything short of HSR,
| the expense in railroads is not engineering. If you're
| interested in a jumping off point for learning more here,
| check out [4].
|
| [1]: https://taxfoundation.org/gasoline-taxes-and-user-
| fees-pay-o...
|
| [2]: https://www.enotrans.org/article/ten-years-of-
| highway-trust-...
|
| [3]: https://infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/roads-
| infrastr... (The Infrastructure Report Card is published
| by the ASCE, which does have an incentive to create more
| work for civil engineers, so it's worth taking it with a
| grain of salt)
|
| [4]: https://palladiummag.com/2022/06/09/why-america-
| cant-build/
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| It needs to make money, or break even at least, because it's
| expensive as hell. Specially since I'm a modal rent and I
| don't live in Madrid or Barcelona, so hardly able to benefit
| from this. I can't say I'm very happy subsidizing this
| operation.
|
| Maybe I'll pay some visit to a city nearby, but I have to be
| quick since everything which is not HSR has a target in the
| back for the public operator.
| ljw1001 wrote:
| If you're not enjoying the weather this summer you're
| already helping to underwrite the cost of the global car
| culture.
| ghaff wrote:
| >If Amtrak went that direction and made its transportation
| close to free, I wonder if we'd see more people try it out.
|
| On the Northeast Corridor it could change the driving equation
| for couples and families. BUT Amtrak on the Northeast Corridor
| already runs at pretty high utilization. In fact, I believe
| there are expansion projects underway.
| balderdash wrote:
| I was under the impression that the northeast corridor is
| actually profitable on its own, and keeps the rest of the
| system from losing even more money
| ghaff wrote:
| That too. Yes. To a first approximation Amtrak makes a fair
| bit of money on the Northeast Corridor which is then loses
| it pretty much everywhere else in the country. (There may
| be a few city pairs that are profitable but not many.)
| gumby wrote:
| It's good that it focuses on regional rail. I have never
| understood why drivers don't favor free public transport paid by
| road taxes: it would take cars off the road and make drivers'
| lives easier!
| Bostonian wrote:
| Train travel may consume less energy than car travel, but it is
| still energy intensive, so I doubt this makes sense if reducing
| CO2 emissions is the goal.
| throw827474737 wrote:
| The results of Germany's 9EUR ticket were profound - where it
| was more meant socially due to rising fuel prices, it had
| tremendous impact even on traffic jams, and people that were
| not expected to switched over. As public transport is usually
| publicly founded and/or subsidized, it also just makes sense to
| make it free for the public. Sure, the riches didn't like their
| Sylt getting invaded by Punks ... but except that I think your
| fear is unfounded, people don't travel just for fun, except for
| vacation/recreation, and it is much unfairer if the poor family
| cannot even do that, while better of people can do anything in
| their megavan (or to the extreme, in their private jet).
|
| Bostonian sounds like Boston ;), is it really so ingrained in
| the US that everything free or social must be bad?
|
| Some kind of mobility is imo kind of basic right, and it
| wouldn't hurt us richer nations to more support it. (just to
| make it clear, saying as someone who likely more pays for it
| than having any use).
| umanwizard wrote:
| > is it really so ingrained in the US that everything free or
| social must be bad?
|
| It's not "the US" as a whole, it's one particular ideology
| within the US, but yes, it's somewhat more common of a view
| than in Germany.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| One could argue that neoliberalism has been the dominant
| ideology in the USA for both parties since Ronald Reagan.
| Democrats and Republicans simply argue about whether the
| government should do very little or nothing at all. (Unless
| they are providing protection to big business, and then the
| government springs in to action.)
| umanwizard wrote:
| According to Wikipedia, the total government budget in
| the US is around $20k per capita[0] which is on par with
| some very rich European countries like Germany and
| France.
|
| The problem in the US is extreme waste/inefficiency and
| unequal access, not lack of spending.
|
| By the way, neoliberalism is the dominant ideology in
| most countries now, not just the US. But neoliberalism
| doesn't mean "no state spending"; that would be an
| exaggerated caricature.
|
| What you're describing is more like libertarianism (in
| the US sense of the term) which indeed is rather unique
| to the US, but not the dominant ideology.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_
| governm...
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Remove the military from your calculations (for US and
| for Europe) and you will find the US spends significantly
| less per capita on its people.
| gernb wrote:
| the problem is incentives.
|
| Japan is often claimed to have the best trains and subways in
| the world. They are privately run for profit and the train
| companies own real estate and business around their stations
| so it gives them a positive feedback loop. more riders = more
| patrons for their other businesses.
|
| conversely a public system someone is always trying to cut
| the budget as it's just an expense from the pov of most
| governments
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| In Spain the stations are run by the infrastructure
| operator, which is a public entity. They don't seem very
| ambtious though. Arguably many stations are old and it's
| difficult to transform them to shopping malls. They
| typically run just a bar and a couple of shops.
| igorkraw wrote:
| On top of what sibling comment said, trains will go anyway, so
| increasing occupancy means less total carbon since otherwise
| you'd have train+car. And for some people, this might mean not
| taking the plane, although I'm unsure about the fraction.
| dagurp wrote:
| Do you have any reason to doubt that?
| bertil wrote:
| Train transport is far less, about _seven times less_ ,
| intensive per passenger than cars. Trains allow the production
| of CO2 to be centralised into a few power plants, owned by a
| handful of companies that are easy to monitor, regulate, and
| put around a table to coerce into emission-free solutions.
| Spain's electricity carbon intensity is expected to fall from
| 167 g/kWh in 2020 to 37 g/kWh in 2050 thanks to the exceptional
| potential of all types of solar and abundant opportunities for
| wind farms.
|
| If you don't believe me, plot the numbers yourself: train
| impact will literally be the width of your pen.
| nodja wrote:
| If the train is free people will choose it more often than
| driving or taking a uber/cab thus saving on CO2 since the train
| would've been running whether it's full or empty.
| gernb wrote:
| it has more to do if the trains are nice, clean, safe, on
| time, plentiful, convenient that price compared to uber
| smileysteve wrote:
| India has joined the chatm
|
| There are multiple aspects depending on what you're trying
| to accomplish.
|
| Your list is great if the target market is upper middle
| class (great for voters and private interest groups).
| Convenient and plentiful are really the ones that matter
| for economic mobility (person that can't get afford car,
| gas,insurance)
| severino wrote:
| On the other hand, if this makes that the trains go full,
| people already using it may go back to driving or taking a
| ubar/cab.
| californical wrote:
| "Nobody ever goes there anymore, it's way too crowded!"
|
| Really though, how is this an issue? A few people might not
| use trains anymore because they are packed full of new
| people? The net result is more people using trains
| severino wrote:
| In Spain, public transportation already suffers from many
| problems. And this can only make it worse, because guess
| what? The government isn't spending a single cent in
| improving our network, it's only going to allow people to
| board for free. And I don't think anybody already using
| his car will now use the train, because despite being
| "free" now, it's not going to be better than using your
| own car. But you're right, I don't think anybody using
| the train will switch to the car again, because
| fortunately, this will only last until December. And it
| won't start until September, because the government
| didn't want the tourists to benefit from this measure.
| Yacoby wrote:
| The goal is to help with the cost of living issues (in part
| caused by high gas costs) and I think reducing CO2 is
| secondary.
|
| Additionally I _suspect_ trains (at least electric ones) have
| far less C02 emissions than cars. I 'm not sure how electrified
| Spains rail is.
| Arnt wrote:
| Your suspicion is correct, under conditions that generally
| apply.
|
| Trains on level ground have _extremely_ low rolling
| resistance. This means that if you have enough train sets for
| peak service, running the train sets all day often makes
| sense, because the additional cost (in terms of CO2) of
| operating a train set for an additional hour is so low. It
| also means that adding passengers to a half-full train is
| practically free (again, in CO2).
| lucb1e wrote:
| > at least electric ones
|
| Diesel trains are better than diesel cars. Carrying a 1000 kg
| shell for an average of 1.something persons with its own
| engine and air resistance, and needing to be able to stop in
| a few hundred meters even at top speed, is less efficient
| than having one engine and one front side to push air out of
| the way and low rolling resistance for transporting many
| people, if you compare equal fuel sources.
|
| But then cars are more flexible because you can take your
| portable shell anywhere at any time, not like the train. Then
| again, I like train rides (especially the Arriva trains
| between Sittard and Roermond are super comfy). There's a
| future for both, I'd say as someone who takes the bus and
| train at every opportunity (including for daily commute) but
| still finds himself in a car regularly.
| belter wrote:
| "63.7% of the kilometers of railway lines managed by Adif and
| Adif AV are electrified. In addition, 83% of train-km is done
| by electric trains."
|
| "Spain opts for massive electricity savings by using railway
| tech" https://www.banenor.no/en/startpage1/News/spain-opts-
| for-mas...
|
| "Percentage of the railway lines in use in Europe in 2019
| which were electrified, by country"
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/451522/share-of-the-
| rail...
| standardUser wrote:
| That's an staggeringly ignorant statement. Trains produce less
| CO2 per passenger mile than virtually any other form of
| transportation.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> It also has another clear objective: helping citizens to
| reduce fuel consumption as energy prices soar.
|
| Train travel may be "better" than auto, but reducing consumption
| by making the product free doesn't mesh with any economics I've
| ever studied.
| DarthNebo wrote:
| Wonder by when we will have global electric railway lines for
| passengers & containers
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Minor correction: nobody can make the train travel free, just
| make it available without paying for. There is no free lunch,
| even if the title is suggesting otherwise.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| I grant you, the title is quite clear - only a minority could
| assume that salaries, maintenance etc. will be for free.
| standardUser wrote:
| Does pedantry actually count as a "correction"?
| DRW_ wrote:
| With this correction, are you under the impression that people
| are assuming there's no cost to running trains now?
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Exactly. In what world is this correction necessary?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| In this one. People often think things are free when
| they're actually paid for by other people's taxes or
| inflation.
| DRW_ wrote:
| Who thinks that except maybe some very small, very
| ignorant and insignificant minority of people? I don't
| understand why people feel the need to point this out -
| everyone already knows this.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| I will raise an exception to the use of '<<know>>', which
| is not really defined in terms of "actually discriminate"
| vs "being able to discriminate". Meaning:
|
| It is not that "people know that money does not come from
| cornucopiae": it is more that they are supposed not to
| hold the idea. Or: it should be implicit knowledge, not
| explicit. Or: you do not need to think about it to avoid
| dreaming that "streets are maintained by volunteers" (for
| lack of more absurd insanities at hand). Or: it's mental
| hygiene not to be delirious and work through a "yes/no"
| system - you are supposed to have plentiful buffers that
| avoid you holding weak ideas...
|
| Edit: or, if really that is something you find in
| society, you have a big elephant in the room (education)
| with priority over trains and everything.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Can you provide an example where you would "actually
| discriminate" that something is free? It seems to me that
| the same obnoxious technicality that opposed ordinary
| uses of the word "free" can be applied to literally any
| usage of the word "free."
| mdp2021 wrote:
| (I am not sure we have fully understood each other, but.)
|
| You know that (the software application) Audacity is free
| (in some sense of "free"), because in your exploration
| you found the notion.
|
| You do not need to know explicitly that Audacity was
| produced our of an effort that cost resources to the
| developers and other facilitators, because the proper
| mental process involves much more that you do not develop
| the opposite idea.
|
| There may be again a link with the words of the late
| Prof. Patrick Winston: "Intelligence is that you do not
| need to run around holding a bucket full of gravel to
| reliably imagine what would happen" (not literal quote).
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Is that true? You appear to be making a point about
| government spending, which, sure, go for it. But I
| wouldn't resort to straw men like "people think a free
| train service costs nothing".
| juunpp wrote:
| Nobody believes that.
| tshaddox wrote:
| No, people think things are free if they are offered at
| no cost, because that's what the word means.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Nobody actually believes that state-funded stuff
| magically doesn't cost anyone anything. This is just a
| strawman.
| argentinian wrote:
| In Argentina, many people that what the state gives can
| really be free. Just talk with people from Argentina, ask
| in forums, if you know people from the country ask them,
| ask in reddit. It's not a strawman, there are many cases.
| You may be fortunate and not see them, but in poorer
| countries with worse education it happens.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| You can bet we know this in Spain.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Robert, go out ASAP and start demanding with the
| uttermost force that """free""" education is provided to
| them.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| In my country, Romania, most people believe the state has
| their own money that are used to pay for stuff. Even if they
| pay taxes, people still believe there is no strict
| correlation. Is it an education problem? Yes. Is it an
| important distinction that needs to be made every single time
| until they understand? YES. And I saw that in most of the
| countries around (former Eastern European Communist
| countries). This is because nobody tells kids and young
| adults in school how the basic government financing works,
| not even in most universities.
|
| A couple of million of these Romanians live in Spain. Guess
| what they think about "free trains".
| pcrh wrote:
| Well, there isn't a strict correlation between the taxes
| people pay and state spending. Typically, taxes cover about
| 70-80% of state spending.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| And where is the rest coming from? Borrowing money? I
| have an extreme experience and knowledge about the
| finances of my country, I can tell you are wrong at least
| for this country.
| pcrh wrote:
| Income from government-owned assets, borrowing money, and
| printing money are the principal other sources of
| government spending. For Romania you can also add
| disbursements from the EU.
| argentinian wrote:
| In Argentina the situation is exactly the same.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Unless there's some kind of enforcement mechanism, free public
| transit becomes the abode of the homeless.
| belter wrote:
| This is Spain not Silicon Valley.
|
| For a country of 48 million people, there is a calculated total
| of homelessness of 40,000. And they have social services to
| support them.
|
| By contrast, 40,000 is the amount of homeless just in the San
| Francisco Area...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Spain
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| When free buss passes were issued in Bucharest, Romania, to
| people over 65 years old there was a major problem with some
| of these people taking the bus across town for most of the
| day during winter and turn off the heating at home. Others
| were crossing the town for several hours a day because they
| were bored at home. It was reported in local newspapers and
| even national TV. One does not need to be really homeless to
| figure out it is convenient to occupy a bus or a train.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Public transport has been free for people over 66 in
| Ireland for as long as I remember, without a plague of old
| people living on the train. That seems more like a local
| problem.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > It was reported in local newspapers and even national TV.
|
| But did you also experience it IRL? Usually the things that
| are newsworthy are not the common standard that everyone is
| actually experiencing in day-to-day life.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Correct, my statistical experiment with a sample of 1 is
| more relevant than several, independent journalists doing
| investigations. I will better myself.
| scrollaway wrote:
| If your journalists are calling something a "major
| problem" and you're not seeing a single instance of it, I
| too got some independent news for you.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I did see that with my own eyes, I was just telling this
| is not mandatory for me to believe it, I heard it from
| too many sources, some quite reliable. I can know things
| that I did not personally encounter, it is a human
| characteristic.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Why is it actually a problem, unless they're stopping other
| travellers with more genuine needs from being able to use
| said buses?
| occz wrote:
| Trying to use a ticketing system as a solution to the
| inconvenience of having to see people without homes is a
| particularly awful take.
|
| Solve the problem of homelessness by making homes and putting
| the homeless people in them, don't use a public transportation
| ticketing system as a means of driving them out of sight.
| smileysteve wrote:
| Physical mobility is one of the most limiting factors for
| economic mobility.
|
| So if some homeless people on trains can reduce the total
| number of homeless it seems like a policy win.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Not if it drives regular citizens from the trains. They would
| become an extremely expensive housing supply rather than
| transportation.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Should not be an issue in Europe. Usually homeless people have
| other options than sleeping in public transport here.
| odiroot wrote:
| Still a big issue in Berlin.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Berlin is not an example of a well run city by European
| standards, despite the high tech wages and being a capital
| city.
|
| Maybe good by Eastern European standards.
| Ferrotin wrote:
| It helps that they have less civil rights in Europe. Or less
| civil liberties. In America the state is very restricted in
| how it can deal with the homeless.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| I'm not sure exactly what sort of "dealing with" you're
| imaginging, but the lack of homeless folk on our public
| transport isn't because they've been locked up, it's
| because they're (for the most part) sleeping in a building.
| For reference:
| https://www.gov.scot/publications/homelessness-scotland-
| upda...
|
| Only 1% of Scotland's homeless were intentionally homeless,
| and 4% reported sleeping rough the previous night -- a
| total of 690 across Scotland. Which is still 690 too many.
|
| And yes, it's not free of charge to the public purse, but
| it's significantly cheaper than _not_ providing support and
| then needing to deal with the consequences.
| juunpp wrote:
| What are you even talking about?
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Please explain. You may give the idea Europe can deal with
| the problem through some unclear authoritarian action.
| Ferrotin wrote:
| The U.S., specially certain states, has what other
| countries would call extreme limits on its ability to
| deal with mentally ill vagrants. An inability to
| involuntarily institutionalize them, or even throw out
| the stuff they abandon on the sidewalk. It isn't from
| lack of money spent on these people.
|
| So you see them riding the BART in San Francisco, making
| a nuisance of themselves, while also, the city spends a
| ton of money and has homeless shelters.
|
| Also, the basic ability of police to hassle people is
| less.
| rsynnott wrote:
| While it'll obviously vary by country, in general the state
| "deals with" homelessness by offering free or subsidised
| housing (preferable) and/or temporary and emergency
| accommodation. Not sure what's particularly anti-civil-
| liberties about that.
| baggachipz wrote:
| Social safety net == "less civil rights' and "less civil
| liberties"? Wow, I'd love to hear how one could ever arrive
| at that conclusion.
| MoreSEMI wrote:
| Do you live in europe? I do and it being europe does not mean
| I haven't seen homeless in public transport.
| odiroot wrote:
| Living in England, I don't even dream about having free travel.
| But having very affordable local trains and buses would be good
| enough. And it's quite feasible too.
| dplesca wrote:
| I visited Berlin this summer and Germany has a 9 euro ticket that
| gives you unlimited travel on local/regional transport services
| during until the end of the calendar month. The ticket can be
| bought only throughout the summer months.
|
| For a tourist that was in town only for a few days, it was just
| amazing, no worries when taking any public transport for ticket
| zones, right tickets or time of availability. I imagine it was
| great for commuters too, price-wise at the very least. To me it
| seems like a great idea, honestly, I'm just not sure what the
| _real_ costs were and how financially viable such a measure would
| be over the long term.
| pcrh wrote:
| I believe part of the motivation for this EUR9 ticket is to
| reduce demand for Russian-sourced petrol/gas used by private
| vehicles.
| ratww wrote:
| Exactly. According to German Wikipedia:
|
| _" The ticket is part of a relief package decided by the
| Scholz cabinet due to the increased energy costs due to the
| Russian attack on Ukraine"_
|
| [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-Euro-Ticket
| ratww wrote:
| I'm also a big fan!
|
| _> The ticket can be bought only throughout the summer
| months._
|
| The ticket is a new thing, by the way. The reason it's only
| available in "summer months" is because they haven't finished
| thinking about how it's gonna be after that.
|
| However the transport companies already manifested interest in
| continuing with the ticket for EUR69 [1]. Sure, not EUR9 but
| still progress. Some parties recently suggested EUR365 per
| year. Both are still a great price IMO considering I used to
| pay EUR40 a month (EUR63 in total, my company pays the rest),
| for a ticket that only covered Berlin!
|
| [1] https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/verbraucher/69-euro-
| tic...
|
| [2] https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/left-
| ca...
| solarkraft wrote:
| I'm not sure I'd pay 70EUR a month, but 30EUR/month would be
| attractive. 70EUR or more would totally be attractive if the
| service was actually of good quality.
| ratww wrote:
| Makes total sense to me.
|
| I personally would probably pay the EUR69 if my employer
| paid a part, since I already pay EUR40 / EUR63 for Berlin,
| which I consider a good deal.
|
| But for people that have a car and tourists EUR70 is indeed
| a bit steep.
| djvdq wrote:
| EUR69 is still a great price. Before I started to work fully
| remotely I was driving by train to work I found that our
| local train carrier here in Poland (Koleje Dolnoslaskie) have
| something like this in offer. For 320 zl (~EUR67 back then,
| I'm not sure about current price) you can go wherever you
| want by their train. So basically covers entire Lower
| Silesian Voivodeship. What's also great about them is that
| they are buying all railroads possible to put trains there
| and their goal is to: (1) all cities have train connection
| available and (2) they want it to be free somewhere in
| future. It's already great and there are way more people
| travelling by train than it was about e.g. 10 years ago.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Traveling by train in Germany is great, but it also an endless
| pandora box of adventures, specially during weekends.
|
| The 9 euro ticket is a nice idea, how well it holds on, even on
| long period depends on improving the infrastructure.
|
| Just today I took almost 3h to what I usually do in 30m with
| the car over the motorway.
|
| Yep 2h 30m extra by taking the 2x bus + train + subway +
| waiting times instead of the car.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| As a German: It is amazing, but not just because of the price,
| also because of the unbelievable simplicity that it makes
| possible.
|
| You pay 9EUR and you get 1 ticket. The transport company then
| charges the government back based on usage.
|
| Why is this a big deal? Well, try finding out how to get
| anywhere in Germany not using the national railroad. Here's the
| map [0].
|
| Not only is there hundreds of local transport companies, they
| are also all part of different, partially overlapping,
| partially non-boundary-aligned conglomerates for which your
| ticket might or might not be valid.
|
| It's insanity.
|
| [0]
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Karte_de...
| ntauthority wrote:
| The 'normal' system being complex is a bit exaggerated here -
| if you have to travel one-off via local multi-mode
| transportation you'd usually just get a regional Deutsche
| Bahn day ticket which will generally by accepted by local
| transport companies as well, and I believe various variants
| of these would also exist for longer-timespan tickets.
|
| Still, that would not be as handy as the _mostly_ unified
| billing system using NFC cards we have in the Netherlands
| since the late 2000s, where if you do not have any
| entitlement valid on a particular mode of transportation, it
| uses a charge card balance as such.
|
| While this isn't as innovative nowadays as it used to be,
| it's still notable as it works in the entire country, which,
| while small, is still not a city-state.
| solarkraft wrote:
| But then you lose a lot of flexibility and pay insane
| prices. Where I live regional travel (what's being called
| complicated here and what the 9EUR ticket is valid for) can
| reasonably cover distances of 50-100km where I live, which
| covers quite a lot of cities.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| > if you have to travel one-off via local multi-mode
| transportation you'd usually just get a regional Deutsche
| Bahn day ticket which will generally by accepted by local
| transport companies as well
|
| I believe that applies in the areas on the map marked in
| yellow (that are not shaded yellow+gray). So I agree that
| this applies _widely_ but certainly not everywhere. I must
| admit I come from an area of Germany where this doesn 't
| apply.
| stop50 wrote:
| It costed the state 2.5 billion euro for three months. The
| ministry tasked with evironment protection, nuclear safety and
| consumer protection has an similar budget in 2021.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| I've been staying in the Torbay area in the UK where the local
| bus company has a 5 GBP ticket for unlimited local travel in
| one day, or 18 GBP for a week.
|
| I think that the point is that once you reach the point that
| all the locals who will take the bus are already taking the bus
| then you have to consider how to attract people who don't
| normally take the bus (train, etc.). At this point the marginal
| cost of carrying an extra passenger is almost zero so any extra
| sale is almost pure profit. So you can drop the price quite
| low, just make it competitive with the cost of parking a car
| and away you go.
| tomputer wrote:
| I did the same, visted Berlin a few weeks ago. It was indeed
| nice that I could take any S-Bahn or U-Bahn without checking
| the times or zones.
|
| I hope they'll continue with this type of 'unlimited' tickes.
| If only during peak summer/winter months. I guess a lot of
| people would gladly pay more for such unlimited (no worry)
| tickets.
| morsch wrote:
| Well, on it's own it's not viable at all, the federal
| government paid for it to the tune of about 2.5 billion EUR.
| Money well spent, if you ask me.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > not viable at all
|
| Depends on how much can be saved on road construction and
| maintenance.
| dplesca wrote:
| Imo viability should be considered if the price that the
| government pays is worth it, the 2022 budget seems to be
| around EUR457.6 billion. 2.5 billion seems to be totally
| worth it, as you agree.
|
| If the measure would be kept year-round, it would cost around
| 10 billion, which seems a tad high. Are these costs offset
| somehow by the symbolic price of the ticket? Until 15 of July
| they sold around 30 million tickets so overall over the 3
| months, maybe 40-45 million tickets would be sold. That makes
| 360-405 million, so around 14-16% of the cost. I'm not sure
| if this money goes to the transport companies or is used to
| offset the government's costs. If the ticket stays, but the
| price increases 2x or 3x (that would still be an enormous
| bargain IMO), costs would be offset even more, probably.
|
| It's debatable of the economical effect that this measure
| already had, taking in consideration higher efficiency of
| public transport, more disposable money for the population,
| freer roads that might lead to more efficient transport
| services etc. Except the flat cost for the government and the
| long-term cost of infrastructure (which might be huge) I
| really can't see many negatives for this measure.
| Fissionary wrote:
| > freer roads that might lead to more efficient transport
| services etc.
|
| https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2022/0
| 7...
|
| Statistics show a huge increase in rail traffic, but only a
| small reduction in road traffic between cities. People just
| started taking extra train journeys for pleasure.
| asymmetric wrote:
| This could absolutely be due to novelty.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > cost of infrastructure
|
| It may be negative, as permanent change would allow to
| reduce road and parking funding.
|
| Also, overall pollution would be lower.
| lock-the-spock wrote:
| Cheaper than most motorway building projects!
| ratww wrote:
| Wow. When you put it this way it makes complete sense.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| I'm in Rome and the full year pass for all public transports
| (including trains but only for transits between train stations
| in Rome) costed me 125 euros.
| hgazx wrote:
| Spain is completely broke as it is. The amount of money the
| socialists of this country waste is astonishing.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Goverment dependence and eradication of normal transportation
| means in the name of some cause. That doesn't sound too
| appealing to me.
|
| The pace at which socialism on HN and progressive circles is
| being propelled is quite alarming. The same hand that feeds us,
| Capitalism, that's now being exercised in Asia to lift people
| out of poverty at an astonishing rate; the same hand is being
| bitten off by people who are enamored with the emotional appeal
| of socialism. It is too easy to sell socialism to public. An
| entire generation of people who value emotions over rational
| thought.
|
| Worth reading:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/opinion/david-brooks-capi...
| throwrqX wrote:
| Countries like China are not capitalist. They may use some
| aspects of capitalist systems but the political systems there
| are thoroughly authoritarian communist.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| What are you talking about? China's economy is absolutely
| capitalist, even modeled in the same way (Shenzhen economic
| zone akin to Ireland's) with some state intervention as of
| late. China's adoption of capitalism, as well as post-1991
| India, is the precise reason for flourishment and lifting
| millions of people out of poverty.
|
| https://hbr.org/2021/05/americans-dont-know-how-
| capitalist-c...
|
| What other countries "like China"?
| Daveenjay wrote:
| Swiss trains are where it's at. Check this video from Not just
| bikes channel
|
| https://youtu.be/muPcHs-E4qc
| ssl232 wrote:
| The difference is ultimately money. A while ago (early 90s?)
| Switzerland voted to spend lots of money on the railway network
| to make it work the way it does. It was discussed on HN before.
| The video you linked notes single tickets are expensive and
| most commuters get half price or free travel paid by their
| employers. It's still a marvel, and I'd love to have the Swiss
| train network in my country even if it costs the same, but
| definitely worth pointing out when comparing to countries who
| don't have the political will to spend more on their railways.
| fulafel wrote:
| The traditional train pricing system seems to result in
| underutilization of a valuable service. Train transit system cost
| is dominated by fixed costs of the rail network and adding extra
| cars to trains is relatively cheap, so free or heavily subsidized
| prices that raise utilization just under congestion level are
| good policy.
| justinhj wrote:
| It's not free it's tax payer funded. If Americans hate the idea
| of paying for someone else's healthcare they're not going to like
| paying for their travel either
| standardUser wrote:
| "It's not free it's tax payer funded."
|
| Did they teach you that at the Pedant's Academy for Libertarian
| Nonsense?
|
| Yeah, government services cost money and the primary source of
| government revenue is taxes. You really cracked the code on
| this one.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Regardless of how inane the original point was here, your
| reply comes across as nasty and equally inane.
| justinhj wrote:
| It's not inane at all. People love the idea of free
| healthcare, loan forgiveness etc, but don't like the idea
| of higher taxes
| argentinian wrote:
| Believe it or not, at least in my country there is a lot of
| people that is not aware of what you mention. Educated people
| like HN readers do, but populist governments (like the one in
| my country) love to highlight all the "free" stuff that
| _they_ give to the people.
| standardUser wrote:
| I think you _think_ that is what other people believe
| because you want someone to blame or think you 're better
| than. People aren't that stupid.
| argentinian wrote:
| Come to Argentina and talk to people. It's very cheap
| right now for foreigners. There are situations that
| people who was raised in an educated home in the first
| world find it hard to believe, but that happen anyways.
|
| Edit: I'll elaborate the point. There are people here
| that for more than 3 or 4 generations lived without
| working, being totally maintained by the state. Also a
| lot of that people never finish elementary school. So
| what happens is that they never think about where what
| they get comes from. It's normal for them to live 'for
| free' without ever considering how that works.
| standardUser wrote:
| When someone gives you a "free" candy bar, no one thinks
| it materialized out of the sky. We _all_ know it had to
| be made somewhere and that process cost money. People
| where you live may not all have sophisticated
| understanding of taxation and government expenditures,
| but they are not _so_ stupid as to pretend things just
| happen by literal magic. They know a doctor they visit
| gets a paycheck and a train the ride costs money to
| maintain and that these things aren 't paid for with
| magic.
|
| So what is their explanation when you talk to them? Do
| they actually say it is magic? Or do they acknowledge the
| universally-known fact that stuff costs money? I can't
| think of a third explanation, so it must be one of the
| two.
|
| They may not share you same perspectives or understanding
| about how taxation works, who is paying those taxes, how
| those taxes are spent etc. But I seriously doubt they
| think it is faeries and wizards.
| [deleted]
| argentinian wrote:
| I'm just explaining facts that most people in Argentina
| would agree with, and get downvotes because what I say
| sounds completely absurd to educated people who live in
| developed countries. Argentina's economy is a mess and
| there are good reasons for it. If you want to check what
| I say, you can go to /r/argentina and ask there.
| argentinian wrote:
| It's about this that you mention:
|
| > do they acknowledge the universally-known fact that
| stuff costs money?
|
| No. They don't. I understand if it sounds absurd to you.
| But that's how it is here.
|
| It's simple: by default they don't think about it. They
| evaluate only considering the short term results. Its
| like this: Free -> like. Pay -> don't like.
|
| Of course if you talk with them they are able to
| understand, but many of them never ever gave any
| consideration to the matter. They don't believe magic
| explanations, they just don't think about it. For
| generations they got most things for free, they don't
| care how it works.
| [deleted]
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